Chapter 29

Cross-Brain AN: Loyal viewers, we must apologize; the previous chapter rounded out at a mere nineteen thousand words. Considering our standards, we simply cannot allow that to go uncorrected. We hope you enjoy, therefore, a much more lengthy chapter.

Hornet AN: And I gotta edit all of it… *mumble mumble*

The Patient One AN: Hey, you're not the only one; who always does the final check? Besides, it's fun.

Xomniac AN: Speak for yourself. You don't need to suffer through the pain of writer's block. Such burnout, so much pain. Good thing we've been working on this thing all week, or else we'd never have gotten this done on time! XP

The Patient One AN: Key word: "we."

"But there's one sound… no one knows… WHAT DOES THE FOX—MMPH!?"

"I'm willing to suffer a lot of shit, Soundbite," I ground out as I forced my fist between the snail's teeth. "But that particular abomination lies ten miles past the pale."

"Heheheh, whipped!" Su giggled.

"It never gets any easier, does it?" Conis sighed, eyes downcast.

"You're lucky, yours doesn't have to hitch a ride," I grumbled.

The somber, tense mood we had had going since we left Lovely Street had ironically alleviated as we approached the treeline of the Upper Yard, courtesy of the comedy stylings of Su and Soundbite, though saying 'comedy' probably gave those two too much credit.

Still, as off-color as the pair's jokes were, they still managed to accomplish the job they set out to do: getting Conis to smile, however melancholy the smile might have been. So, really, I couldn't fault them for whatever they did… at least, up until Soundbite moved to that song. I should have seen it coming with an actual fox onboard. I could only imagine how bad it would be if Soundbite taught Su the lyrics… or even worse: the rest of the crew actually liked the song. Like he didn't enjoy spouting earworms like crazy already!

I shook my head as I refocused on the matter at hand; the treeline was approaching, but I had no way to inform my crewmates, and especially not Conis, of exactly what we were going to face when we got there. I didn't even bother with contemplating choosing another path besides Satori's; Zoro was the only one who'd be able to reliably go toe-to-toe with Ohm, even without the Iron Cloud traps. Idiot though Gedatsu was, one wrong step on his turf meant a Swamp Cloud bath. And though Soundbite could make quick work of Fuza, we were still expecting Shura to attack the Merry, plus we had no way of reliably countering his String Clouds. Basically, of the priests, only Satori's turf wasn't a guaranteed death sentence.

…Alright, so I did consider the other paths, but only to confirm that the best choice was to stick with what we knew. But I was itching for some way to fill in the gap as we got there with some kind of meaningful conversation, while at the same time not saying anything that would draw more of Eneru's ire than we already had. But what was I supposed to—?

"Excuse me, Cross?"

Conis' voice broke me out of my thoughts, prompting me to turn and look at her. "What is it, Conis?"

"I've been wondering for a while, I've never learned all that much about Devil Fruits," she said, her face curious. "Not many of the Blue Sea Dwellers who have come to Angel Island over the past several years had them, and even fewer were willing to talk about their powers. I know that they give whoever eats them great power at the cost of never being able to swim again, but that's about it. Could you tell me more about them?"

I glanced back at the approaching treeline before shrugging. "Sure, it's pretty simple, really. There are three different types of Devil Fruit. Zoan-types give the power to turn into a specific animal, like a jackal, a falcon, or a horse; those users are usually close-combat fighters, taking advantage of the extra strength the fruit gives them. Logia-types give the power to turn into a specific element or control it, like smoke, fire, or sand. They're renowned as the most powerful of the three types, both for offensive purposes and the fact that unless you have a counter for the element they turn into, it's impossible to hurt them. And Paramecia-types… well, they cover anything else."

"Anything? That seems… I don't know… risky?" Conis said uncertainly.

I shrugged. "Any Devil Fruit is risky; most people who eat them never know what powers they'll get until after they get them. And sure, some abilities are more inherently powerful than others, but no power is useless; it all depends on the user's ingenuity and dedication. For example, at first glance, you wouldn't think that controlling sound would be all that useful of an ability, at least not from an offensive standpoint. But with how much practice Soundbite put in, he's made it a lethal force."

"I'M A BADASS, BABY!" Soundbite cheered in agreement.

"Another example from earlier in our crew's journey is the Kilo-Kilo Fruit, which allows the user to shift their weight upwards and downwards in increments of kilograms. Doesn't sound that useful, but the user was an assassin who put it to good use by shifting her weight to a single kilogram, so that she could jump absurdly high and float with a parasol, before ramming it in the other direction to several thousand kilograms, so that she hit with the force of a small meteorite. And that's just two examples out of the few dozen that I know, and even that's a small percentage of how many there are; the Paramecia fruits are the most common of the three kinds."

"I see," Conis nodded sagely before tilting her head curiously, and maybe a bit hopefully. "I don't suppose you know how powerful a Paramecia fruit can be?"

I smiled darkly. "Down on the Blue Seas, any conversation about the strongest starts with seven people. To my knowledge, of these individuals, five have Devil Fruit Powers. Only one was a Logia-user; the other four are all Paramecia-users. And they're still feared the world over."

"Coooool…" Su whistled in awe.

"Indeed," I nodded in a somewhat absentminded manner as we finally entered the forest, passing between flaming effigies of wood and bone and statues of molded vearth alike, as well as a small cemetery's worth of wrecked ships that had to have been purposely arranged.

"So, Conis, how likely is it that we're going to have to deal with a lot of traps from this point onward?"

"Um… very likely, I think," Conis noted nervously as she glanced around at the literally giant-sized trees that surrounded us. "At least until we reach one of the Priests' areas."

"Perfect! Soundbite, keep your… um, hearing open—"

"TOOK YA this long to figure out that I DON'T HAVE EARS?"

"And Luffy, Sanji, Lassoo, Donny, and Leo? Keep your eyes open," I continued, ignoring Soundbite's jab. The snail rolled his eyes, but nonetheless began concentrating. Then he abruptly grimaced.

"EVERYONE, keep your eyes on the PATH, AND be ready to parry ON MY MARK," he said.

All five took their positions, warily scanning the shadows of the forest.

"Be very, very careful," I warned them as I watched the darkness. "This place is perfect for a veritable array of deathtraps that could be hiding in any number of nooks and crevices."

"What the heck do you know about deathtraps, white bread?" Lassoo snorted.

I promptly sat up with a jerk, giving the mutt-weapon an incredulous glare. "Ex-cuse me?! What do I know about—? I will have you know that I grew up with the Indiana Jones series!"

"Indiana who?" Conis blinked in confusion.

"Dun du-dun DUN, dun du-DUUUUN!" Soundbite sang even as he kept his eyes on a swivel.

"Indiana Jones is an adventure series from back home," I explained. "It's about the adventures of the titular archaeologist, who delves into countless forgotten tombs in order to liberate their treasures so that they might be shared with the world! Of course," I shrugged helplessly. "The ancient people who built said tombs didn't want their treasures to be stolen, so the tombs were always stocked full of a variety of deathtraps. These traps included swinging blades—"

"LEO! PARRY right!"

The blue-clad Dugong drew his swords just fast enough to catch the blade of a titanic scythe that had been about to bisect us. One heave later, and it was swinging harmlessly over our stern.

Of course, it wasn't the only one. Almost a half-dozen of the things swung out of the jungle and tried to tear into us, practically all at once, at that. It was only thanks to the panicked actions of Donny operating the Dial Engine, Luffy and Sanji smashing away the weapons by the flats of their blades, and Lassoo blasting the mechanisms hidden in the forest that we remained uninjured.

"—often with tribal faces, much like these…" I calmly mused as I observed my very on-edge crewmates. "As well as dart-launchers—"

"GET DOWN!"

We hit the deck, pressing ourselves against the floor of the boat as a series of wooden clicks echoed out of the jungle and a rainstorm of thunks littered the sides of the Crow. When we righted ourselves, the woodwork of the ship was absolutely peppered with sharpened wood stakes.

"Spring-loaded spears hidden along the often-traveled path—" I continued as if we were in a classroom.

"VEER Left! RIGHT! ACCELERATE!"

The Crow pulled off an impressive display of veering and maneuvering as it dodged and wove around the mess of wood stakes that erupted from the bed of the Milky Road.

"Giant monsters, as well as deadly snakes…" I continued, grinning eagerly.

"GIANT SEA SNAKE!" Luffy shouted, prompting Sanji and Donny to leap at the monster and smash its jaws open, followed by Lassoo blasting a bomb down its gullet.

"Actually, I think that was a lamprey…" Donny muttered.

"And, of course, the classic booby trap that became a downright cliché in all subsequent works—"

"WILL SOMEONE SHUT HIM UP ALREADY?!" Su yelped.

"—the giant rolling boulder of doom," I finished.

And… nothing.

"Aww…"

THUNK!

"OWCH!" I yelped as I clutched my throbbing skull.

"DON'T SOUND SO DISAPPOINTED, DUMBASS!" Sanji, Lassoo, Su, and the Dugongs roared.

"Oh, thank—!" Conis started to sag…

Before we passed between a pair of steel rails that had been sloped down from the jungle's canopy and aligned only a foot or two above the surface of the Milky Road.

"Uh-oh…" Soundbite muttered.

"Maybe it won't activate?" Conis said hopefully.

She received the answer in the form of a rolling rumble echoing from up above.

"If I have learned one thing from my sixteen hours with this crew, it is that one should never say something like that; it's merely an invitation for someone watching to laugh at you when it happens anyway," Isaiah commented dryly.

"A fair evaluation," Su nodded in agreement. "I, however, have a counter-proposal."

She then used Conis as a springboard to leap at me, hackles raised. "THIS IS ALL HIS FAULT!"

"GAH! OWOWOWOW! GET THIS MANGY FURBALL OFF OF ME!"

"Su!" Conis protested as she tried to wrench her pet off of my face. "Could someone help me, please?!"

"My sincerest apologies, dearest Conis, but I'm more inclined to dedicate my attention to rowing the hell away!" Sanji barked as he dug his paddle into the cloudy river.

"ON IT!" Donny and Leo concurred as they grabbed for the spare oars.

"And the reason you two aren't towing is—!?" Lassoo trailed off incredulously.

The Dugongs froze up as they exchanged looks before grabbing a spare rope, wrapping it around the neck of the Crow, and leaping into the cloud sea. One second later, the Crow shot forward, just fast enough that the enormous and impeccably spherical boulder wasn't catching up with us.

Finally, thankfully enough, the rails veered to the side into the forest and the boulder was carried away from us, and onto a curving path back into the forest. After that, we floated along in relative peace, broken only by my attempts to keep Su from ripping my face off, which my crewmates—and Conis, by this point—were casually refusing to help me with.

Finally, I'd had enough. "SOUNDBITE! GASTRO-PHONY THE FOX!" I snapped.

"NO—!…gladly!"

There was a burst of air and Su halted for a moment in her attempt to rip my face off, giving me just enough time to grab her by the scruff of her neck—

"HURK!"

SPLAT!

—at the exact same time as I was reminded of what Gastro-Phony did to its targets.

"…Soundbite? If we happen to meet Eneru, remind me to let you speak your mind," I said calmly, as if I was not, in fact, soaked from head to neck in fox vomit.

"HAHAHAHEEHEEHEEhoohoohoo!" Soundbite cackled.

"Tseeheeheehee…" Su snickered in spite of her slightly sickly tone.

"Oh, Su…" Conis sighed as she took her pet out of my hands.

"As satisfying as that was, it's also murder on my sinuses," Lassoo muttered, punctuating the point with a nasty grimace and scrunched muzzle.

"Allow us," Donny and Leo chorused as they grabbed me beneath my armpits.

"Wait, wha—?" I barely had time to blink as Luffy snatched Soundbite off my shoulder. "Nonono—!"

SPLASH!

"…Is this going to be a thing until we get back to the blue sea?" I ground out as I clawed my way back onboard. "Because if so, rest assured, I can be much worse than I've been up until now."

Conis chuckled uneasily. "We'll be sure to keep that in mind, right, everyone?"

A pause.

"Your stunned silence is VERY reassuring," Soundbite drawled.

"We're not silent about that, shit-snail…" Sanji corrected.

"We're all looking at that!" Luffy grinned eagerly as he pointed ahead.

I turned my gate in the indicated direction, to be met with the four-mouthed gate indicating the direction of the four Ordeals.

Conis's reaction was much more visceral, her body locking up as she stared at the names. "The Ordeal of Swamp, the Ordeal of Iron, the Ordeal of String, and the Ordeal of Balls," she read fearfully. "Each of God Eneru's four priests presides over one of the Ordeals; I've only heard rumors, but I know with certainty that the survival rates are…"

"Not encouraging," Su provided venomously.

"So… which one is the least dangerous?" Donny asked.

Su shrugged and shook her head dismally. "I'm not sure. All the animals in there are tamed by the priests, so they don't talk with anyone outside and attack anyone who goes in. But going off of what I've heard of the priests themselves… we should steer clear of the Ordeal of Iron and the Ordeal of String."

Sanji pointedly turned towards me, and I held my finger up in a 'wait' signal.

"I say we go for the Ball!" Luffy said, grinning eagerly. "That one sounds like fun!"

"Satori…" Su mused. "The… weirdest of them, I've heard. Better than Ohm or Shura, at any rate."

"Well, the captain has spoken," I said with a sigh, though the smile I was sporting was all that the crew needed to see. Sanji turned the wheel towards the rightmost tunnel, and in a matter of seconds, we were plunged into darkness.

We sailed on in silence for a bit until I decided it'd be best to try and lighten the mood a little. "Hey, Soundbite, how about some appropriate music for an ominous tunnel?" I asked cheekily.

"Ooh, GOODY! There's no earthly way of knowing~, which direction we are going~" Soundbite crooned in Gene Wilder's voice. "There's no knowing where we're rowing~, or which way the river's flowing~"

"Will you give it a rest?!" Su snapped.

"Is it raining, is it snowing~" Soundbite sang on, doubling his volume. "Is a hurricane a-blowing~" Then he suddenly gasped. "Not a speck of light is showing, so the danger must be growing… are the fires of hell a-glowing? Is the grizzly reaper mowing?!"

"Cross, will you please shut that damn snail up already!?" Sanji demanded.

"You are joking, right?" I deadpanned.

"YES! The danger must be growing, for the rowers keep on rowing… AND THEY'RE CERTAINLY NOT SHOWING… ANY SIGN THAT THEY ARE SLOWIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

The last line devolved into a shriek of terror as we shot out of the tunnel like a cork from a bottle, hanging in the air for the briefest of moments.

I glanced around in confusion at everyone's frozen expressions. "Oh, come on, don't tell me you didn't see the 'inevitable waterfall' cliché a mile off."

"I hate you, Cross," Su whimpered.

"JOIN THE CLUB!" a chorus of voices from persons both present and gastropod-based agreed.

And just like that, gravity reasserted itself, sending us all plummeting into the abyss.

SPLASH!

Well, for half a minute or so, at least, until we impacted the Milky Road waiting below.

I chuckled as I slowly righted myself, bracing against the prow of the ship in an effort to still my slightly shaking legs. "Well, that was certainly a rush! Anyone else wanna go for round two once we're done with all this?"

"I DO! I DO!" Luffy piped up eagerly. "That was awesome! I thought I was gonna die!"

"SO DID WE!" Sanji, Lassoo, and the Dugongs roared with considerably more heat.

"Hey, look at it this way: it could have been worse." I grinned at the disbelieving looks everyone shot me. "I mean, imagine if someone had guessed that we'd gone through a door that would drop us off the edge of the clouds. Wouldn't that have made the whole thing that much more terrifying?"

Everyone familiar with our captain's antics grasped the hidden meaning in my words and glared furiously at Luffy. Unfortunately for me, that still left two others, one of whom was practically glowing with anger.

"I'm going to kill him," Su snarled, her eyes cracked open and glaring at me.

Thankfully, the cloud fox was still held firmly in Conis's arms… while the angel was staring at me with an unreadable expression. She then glanced down at Su, then back to me, before shrugging her shoulders impassively. "Alright."

"Wait, wha—?"

And before I could react, Conis flung her pet at my face.

"EAT MY FANGS, BIG-MOUTH!"

"ARGH!"

"HOOHOOHOOheeheeheeHAHAHA!"

"YOU LITTLE TRAITEAAAARGH!"

About a minute later, I was damn grateful that I got those vitamins from Kureha because I'm pretty sure that with the sheer number of bites I'd gotten, I would have been dead about a hundred times over otherwise. Thinking about it more, I was pretty sure that this would actually seem funny in hindsight, seeing how I looked now. And if nothing else, Su's viciousness proved that Conis had a good bodyguard even if worst came to worst.

But did any of that give me any consolation for the hundreds of bite marks on my face and upper body in general?

Not particularly!

"Why do all Animal Companions have such an intense desire to maul me?" I groused miserably.

"Hey, I never did anything to you," Lassoo mumbled, somewhat indignantly.

"You only half-count, Howlitzer," Su deadpanned as she spat out a few torn scraps of my shirt.

Lassoo paused as he considered that before shrugging. "Fair enough."

"And as for you," Su snapped her glare back to me. "In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a fox. We like being the smartest animals in our general vicinities, and your smart-ass attitude is getting on my nerves!"

"Bi—ergh," I cut myself off as the hundreds of punctures on my body burned. I pondered my options and ultimately decided to go with the route least likely to earn me any more pain from my allies. So I gave her a flat, serious look.

"Well, excuse me for being familiar with the pattern of events that are occurring to us. Remind me how much you want us to succeed here?"

Su bristled for a few seconds but ultimately turned back to Conis with a huff. "Fine, I can't argue with that. But if we do win—"

"Then you'll owe it to me to let me keep outfoxing you," I said with a smirk. "Besides, if it's making you this angry, imagine what it will do to the priests. Anger leads to distraction, and distraction in a situation like this leads to a cruel and unusual death."

It was hard to tell, but I'm pretty sure that after a few seconds, Su smirked at me. "Directing the smartass at others apart from me? Now, that I can live with."

"Alright, now that that little dilemma is solved, do you know anything else about this Satori, Su?" Donny asked.

"Well, we don't know a lot, but—!" Su started to look towards Donny before suddenly locking up, staring past him with a slight shiver.

The dugong sighed in resignation. "He's right behind me, isn't he?"

"No…" Su shook her head lightly. "It's just… the only thing I've heard about him is that he really likes balls."

Leo cocked an eyebrow as he crossed his arms. "We could have guessed that from the name of the Ordeal."

Su shook her head lightly. "No, I mean…" She jerked her chin upwards. "He really likes balls."

We all followed the cloud fox's gaze and froze in shock.

"Uh…" I started slowly. "Am I having a stroke, or is the air filled with floating ball-shaped clouds?"

Lassoo slowly nodded his head side-to-side. "Honestly? I think that's a lot more believable than the reality of this whole situation."

I really couldn't argue with that statement. Honestly, if you thought the situation was absurd in the manga, it was nothingcompared to real life. Countless orbs of pure white clouds were floating back and forth through the forest, as light as feathers despite being the size of exercise balls at least and twice that at most. When you added in the fact that the Milky Road split off and crisscrossed through the trunks of the forest like some kind of massive deformed hydra, the scene as a whole looked like something straight out of one of M.C. Escher's sketchbooks.

"What the hell…?" Donny trailed off slowly, obviously trying to make some logical sense of the illogical scene he was being presented with.

"Well, this is certainly bizarre, but I must admit, it doesn't surprise me that one of the chief followers of someone who can rain down lightning half the size of the Knock-Up Stream would have a lair such as this," Isaiah reflected.

"Hey, maybe we got lucky and chose the path that's not dangerous at all!" Luffy grinned eagerly.

"I… seriously doubt that, Luffy," Conis swallowed, warily eyeing the balls that kept drifting just a little too close for comfort. "Satori has something of a reputation for being odd, certainly, but he has just as much a reputation for being sadistic."

"This doesn't make any sense…" Su muttered to herself as she snapped her head around. "All the animals who got out of here alive said that there were other animals in here, but this place is dead as a graveyard. No birds, nothing on the ground, so where could they be?"

"UH…" Soundbite trailed off as he clenched his eyes shut in concentration, before snapping them open in panic. "DUCK!"

I jerked my head down just as a roaring hiss sounded behind me and a large-ass snake shot out of a ball I hadn't noticed drifting by, biting through the space where my head had been moments earlier. Acting fast, I snatched Soundbite off of my shoulder and slapped him to the underside of the serpent's jaw. "Gastro-Blast!"

"Ba-BAM!"

The snake's head shot upwards, wrapping around the ball it had emerged from with a pained gurgle, hanging listlessly and dripping blood as we sailed away.

"What the hel—!?" Sanji started to curse before noticing another ball floating towards us. "Oh, hell, no, not this time!" He reeled back his leg—

"MOVE!" Lassoo barked, tackling Sanji out of the way before blasting a baseball into the cloud, causing it to erupt in an impressive explosion.

"The heck—?!"

"That cloud," Lassoo growled viciously. "It reeked of gunpowder."

"What kind of madhouse is this place!?" Donny demanded, back to back with Leo as they brandished their respective weapons, ready to strike at any orb that drifted too close.

"Sadistic and smart…" I bit out. "He took a minefield and made it three-dimensional, and decided to throw in a bunch of other tricks besides just bombs."

"But is that really all?" Su wondered as she looked this way and that. "I mean, they're dangerous, sure, but it's not too hard to avoid them if they're just floating like this. There has to be more to it."

"Haha-HA! It would appear that the sayings about the intelligence of foxes are true! Haha-HA!"

"Holy crap, one of the balls is talking!"

"I'm not a cloud ball, you brat!"

The rest of us who weren't Luffy all froze as a stupidly nasal voice came from a direction above and beside us, and slowly turned to look at its source. I then found any fear I had melting away; I knew exactly how formidable Satori was, but actually seeing him in that very round outfit was… disarming, to say the least.

"…Are you serious?" I deadpanned. "Because, honest opinion here, if you want to look threatening, I don't think the best way to do it is by dressing up like a giant cream puff."

"Haha-HA!" the creampuff in question cackled jovially. "Appearances can be deceiving, dear boy! Just like the surprise clouds you see all around us, you never know what could be hidden in an unassuming form like this! Ohm, Shura, and even that ignoramus Gedatsu all prefer straightforward intimidation. But I say, why not have a little more fun? That's why I'm so glad you picked my challenge, the Ordeal of Balls!" The rotund priest tilted his head downwards, emphasizing the sadistic gleam in his grin. "It only has a ten percent survival rate, you know! Haha-HA!"

"Is this guy really a priest?" Sanji asked skeptically.

"…I have to admit, looking at him, it is kind of hard to take him seriously," Su admitted, before growling. "But judging from the fact that a snail just maimed a snake ten times its size, you should know that that doesn't mean much."

I nodded in solemn agreement at that. "Yeah, you're right. All too often, the stupid-looking enemies are the most dangerous because they've earned the right to look stupid. And he's got a home-field advantage too, so if he starts the fight on his terms, he'll have the upper hand. Which means…"

I swiftly took a knee and held an arm out to Lassoo, who took the prompt and leaped at me, morphing into his gun-mode mid-jump. This allowed me to balance him on my shoulder and aim him at Satori.

"We need to end this before it can even begin!"

I positioned my finger on Lassoo's trigger, moments away from pulling it—

Satori grabbed the brim of his hat and tilted it down, hiding his eyes but not his smile. "Projectile, explosive, center mass."

—before promptly freezing, locking the muscles in my finger as I maintained my stance. I slowly tilted my head to the side as I stared at the priest. "You… have Haki, don't you," I said quietly.

Satori looked up at me in confusion. "Haki?"

"…that's right, I've heard it's sometimes called Mantra as well." I cracked my neck side to side as Satori raised his eyebrows. "Well, I guess you were right about having hidden talents up your sleeves, Pillsbury."

"What's Mantra, Cross?" Luffy asked, slowly sliding into a ready stance with his fists raised, a motion that prompted Satori to tense up himself.

"They usually call it Observation Haki on the blue sea," I explained, not breaking my eye contact with the priest. "Basically, it's a sixth sense that gives you the power to detect the presence of others around you and predict their movements a few seconds before they make them. From what I've heard, it's possible for anyone to unlock the ability, but of the world's population, I'd say that the amount of people that ever do is only around five percent, tops."

"Haha-HA! Your friend is accurate about the rarity of Mantra," Satori gloated. "God Eneru and we, the four priests under his command, are the only ones blessed with the ability in all of Skypiea."

'Bar the little girl who trumps Eneru ten times over while doing it completely au naturel,' I added silently.

"He can predict our moves? THAT'S SO COOL!" Luffy exclaimed.

"Someone dope-slap him for me, please," I growled.

THWACK!

"Thank you. Now, then…" I clenched one of my eyes shut as I took aim at Satori. "Let's deal with this bastard."

And then… I did nothing. I maintained my pose, kneeling as I aimed at Satori. Unseen thanks to the angle of the barrel, I whispered out of the corner of my mouth at Lassoo. Soundbite then proceeded to relay the gun's responses to me, low enough that no one heard.

"…Cross?" Conis asked, warily shrinking away to the back of the Crow.

"Hahaha-HA! I see!" Satori crowed, grinning menacingly. "You don't have the will to fire, do you? Foolish boy; did you come here thinking that this was a game? These holy Ordeals are trials of life or death! I am one of the Priests who serve the great God Eneru, and while my Ordeal's survival rate is not the lowest among the four, I did not gain and maintain that honor by being merciful! If you won't attack—" Satori hopped to his feet, crouching in preparation. "Then I will!"

It was at that moment that Lassoo stopped talking.

"You're right and wrong, you know?" I called up at the priest, causing him to pause.

"Hm?" Satori tilted his head in curiosity. "What do you mean?"

"You're right in saying that I'm not going to shoot you," I conceded. "With your Haki, you'd see any direct attacks coming from a mile away, making a head-on assault completely and utterly useless."

Satori's grin widened as he nodded in agreement. "You've got the right of it there, boy! Trying to attack me is completely useless! Now, out of curiosity…" His grin became more mocking than sadistic. "How was I wrong, hmm?"

Now it was my turn to grin, a small smirk more than anything. "You said that this wasn't a game. Well, see, that statement was wrong on account of how I'm about to turn it into one."

Satori's smile faded into a thoroughly puzzled expression. "What are you talking about?"

"A game straight from the Blue Seas that's equal parts strategy and luck. You might have even heard of it…" My smile became feral as I swung my torso 90 degrees, pointing Lassoo at the mass of cloud balls he had told me to aim for. "Billiards!"

Satori started in panic. "Nononono—WAIT!"

I didn't. "CANI-CANNON BARRAGE!"

And just like that, the cannon I was carrying started rumbling, launching out a hail of baseballs that hit cloud ball after cloud ball after cloud ball dead-on, sending them ricocheting off against the ground, the trees—and more importantly, dozens of other cloud balls at a time, starting an absolute shitstorm of a reaction.

"CONIS, MAX SPEED!" I roared, tossing Lassoo down and allowing him to morph back into his hybrid form and continue shooting cloud balls so as to keep the momentum going, while I braced myself. Everyone else promptly did the same as Conis complied, leaping to the front of the ship and triggering the Crow's Breath Dial for all it was worth.

"HEY! WHERE THE HELL DO YOU THINK—GAH!" Satori's enraged shriek was aborted by a yelp of terror he let loose as he narrowly avoided being brained by a ballistic cloud ball ricocheting towards him. He'd barely managed to regain his balance when he was forced to spin on his toes in order to dodge around another ball. He was then forced to take a spinning leap upwards as yet another ball knocked into the one he'd been standing on, ricocheting it off into the madness. Credit where it was due, panicked though he was, Satori was on the ball (pun intended); he dug his Ball Dial out of his pocket, oriented himself so that it was beneath him and activated it. The new cloud was just forming…

WHOMP!

"AGH!"

When a fourth ball blindsided him, going so far as to sprout tentacles and grab hold of him before yanking him along and out of sight.

A few moments later, we were well on our way towards the exit of the Lost Forest, and I couldn't stop grinning.

"Um, Cross? Not that that wasn't completely awesome, but… what just happened?" Su asked hesitantly.

"Observation Haki, or 'Mantra,' as you know it, is a powerful ability, but it has three key weaknesses, two of which I just exploited," I explained. "The first is that it can only predict direct attacks; if you don't know where you're aiming, they can't know it either. And the second is that you have to keep yourself focused to actually be able to 'see' jack. If you get flustered or lose your nerve…"

"Then you're dead meat," Leo nodded firmly, absentmindedly slicing through a ball that was coming towards us that Soundbite indicated. It was easy to defend when you knew which ones had literal live ammo and which ones were explosive or trip-wired.

"Exactly. Looks like for all of his gloating, Satori relied too much on getting the drop on people and forcing them to fight while off-balance and panicked, and it might have worked, too," I shrugged with a snicker. "Iiiif I wasn't savvy enough to know about the ins and outs of Haki and how to exploit them. I guess spending seven years whiling the day away with storytellers and good books paid off."

"Hmm…" Donny mused contemplatively as he used his staff to send another wayward ball careening back into the mess. "I don't suppose any of those mentioned how to learn Observation Haki, did they?"

I scowled darkly. "Not a one. I tried getting instructions from someone who knew them, but he was either a moron or a total—!"

"Cross," Luffy warned me testily.

"Mmhmm…" I interrupted myself with a self-conscious cough. "Still, come on, Luffy, after that upstaging he did back in Nanohana?"

"Heheh. Yeah, he can be a bit of a jerk, can't he?" Luffy chuckled before going completely serious. "He's still my brother, though."

I sighed, knowing that was probably all I was going to get. "Fair enough, captain."

That done, I scanned over the boat, noting the white-knuckled grip Conis had on the wheel. "Hey, you alright, Conis?"

The angel twitched slightly before sagging with a sigh. "It's just… the ease with which you dispatched Satori…"

"Let me stop you there, Conis," Su prompted as she jumped onto her owner's shoulders. "First, if you're thinking about how Satori was supposed to be this big and undefeatable monster, remember: monsters can still be human, and vice-versa. And second, if you're thinking that you could have beaten him sooner if you were braver, newsflash: you had every reason to be terrified of fighting back. If you'd tried fighting back… well, you experienced it firsthand. I might have been a bit forceful back in the house, but I promise you, Conis, you did everything right, everything you needed to survive. That's what counts, right?"

Conis was silent for a moment before smiling lightly. "Yeah, you're right." She reached up and scratched behind the fox's ears. "Thank you, Su."

I whistled in awe as I watched the fox purr and croon beneath Conis' fingers. "Hot damn, puffball."

"Psh, please," Su scoffed as her tail wagged at the praise. "I've been practicing cheering her up without speaking for years. I'm just putting all that to good use." She gave me a sly look over her shoulder. "You're not the only smart one here, smart-ass."

"THAT'S up for DEBATE, cotton-tail!" Soundbite chuckled underneath his breath.

"Bite me, slimestain," Su shot back pleasantly, waving her tail at him.

And so the trip through the Lost Forest remained relatively uneventful from there; Leo, Donny, Sanji, Luffy, and Lassoo dealt with the Surprise Clouds while the rest of us just settled in for the ride. Su and Soundbite's playful banter was the most exciting thing to deal with up until the path finally sloped upwards towards the exit.

It was just as we were turning onto the path out that we were met with adversity.

"HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, YOU HERETICAL SCUM!"

"Oy, this guy," Soundbite groused as we turned to see that Satori had indeed managed to fight past the storm of petards we'd yanked him by. He was cut up, bruised, burnt, soaking wet, and even a little bit blown up, but above all else? He was pissed. And if his face wasn't proof enough of that, the several-dozen-cloud-balls-long dragon he was directing with a red-and-white striped cane certainly was.

"You're clever, I'll admit that much, but I'm not about to let you get away after making a fool out of me like that!" the priest shouted furiously. "Count yourselves lucky, for I will finish you with my signature ultimate technique, the Ball Dragon: Overlord Edition! Several dozen shrapnel and explosive orbs strung together in a devastating column; a single touch will detonate it and—"

That was as far as he got before I snapped my fingers and pointed at him, prompting Lassoo to spray a black projectile at Satori. As I expected, he was too angry to have any focus on his Haki, allowing the projectile to hit him dead-on and splatter, coating him head to toe in a viscous liquid that left him hacking and flailing.

"W-what the—!?"

"Cani-Plaster," I explained calmly, making a show of examining my fingernails. "It's a close cousin to Cani-Slick. How do you like it?"

"Uh, Cross?" Luffy asked as he tilted his head in confusion. "How're they any different? They both cover the person in black slimy stuff."

"Indeed, Luffy, except!" I jabbed a finger up. "That where Cani-Slick is nice and slippery octopus ink, this black slimy stuff is tough and adhesive tar, capable of sticking like the absolute dickens. Allow me to demonstrate the difference. Lassoo?" I tilted my finger so that it was pointing at the ball Satori was just barely balancing on. "Cani-Slick."

"Oh, this should be fun," Sanji grinned as he read the situation, and the Dugongs and Luffy seemed to agree wholeheartedly from the way they were staring eagerly at the now horrified priest.

Lassoo bared his teeth before opening his jaws and spitting up yet another projectile, this one painting the snow-white cloud ball black. Satori tried to leap off of his perch, but promptly lost his traction on the ink. His feet flailed and skidded uselessly for a few seconds until his rotund mass worked against him, causing him to make an impressive flip before belly-flopping onto the ball stomach-first, which he stuck fast to. He tried to push himself free with his spread-eagled arms, but his efforts were ultimately for naught.

"You… YOU…!" he spat irately.

"Let me explain the difference between you and us, Pillsbury," I stated as I glared up at the priest. "Us, we Blue Sea Dwellers? We rely on our skills, which we work hard to train and perfect until we can stand up to any enemy, and either overpower them or outsmart them. You? All you've got going for you are a bunch of tricks. Hiding behind smoke and mirrors to make yourself seem bigger than you already are."

"NOT THAT HE needs the HELP!" Soundbite cackled.

"Well, I've got news for you, o wonderful wizard," I smirked as I jabbed my finger past him. "Your strings are starting to show."

Satori followed my finger and paled (I assume, the tar made it hard to tell) as he caught sight of the nigh-invisible wire he'd been using to direct his 'Dragon', outlined by globs of tar.

The priest's already panicked breathing accelerated as he snapped his gaze back to me, obviously terrified out of his wits. "W-w-what are you going to do to me?" he whimpered.

I shot him a feral grin as I tapped my finger against my skull. "Why don't you. Tell. Me."

Satori stared at me for a moment, before starting to flail and wail in a desperate attempt to unstick himself, gibbering in panic.

"Soundbite," I snickered at the display. "Some… appropriate music, if you please?"

The snail roared with laughter as he nodded. "ON IT, MAESTRO!" And with that, the air filled with a very specific organ tune, which started slowly mounting in tempo.

"Captain," I grinned widely as I turned to face Luffy. "If you would please? Batter up."

Luffy matched my grin tooth for tooth as he unslung his pipe and began twisting up his body and arm as if he were preparing for a combined Pinwheel and Rifle attack.

"GUM-GUM…" Luffy shouted as he leaped into the air towards the priest and slowly began untwisting, heedless of Satori's frantic screams and threats.

By the time his pipe struck the ball dead-on, its speed gave it a striking force that would have made Mr. 4 green with envy… eventually.

"HOME RUN!"

The priest and his prison were sent flying, ricocheting off of tree trunk after branch after tree trunk, with the Ball Dragon trailing close behind.

"And he, is…" Soundbite started eagerly, tilting his head in preparation…

KRAKOOM!

For the absolutely earth-shattering detonation that occurred a minute later.

"OUTTA HERE!" Soundbite sang joyously, swaying from side to side.

"And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the third and most blatant weakness of Mantra: predicting an attack is useless if you can't do anything to keep it from going through," I said smugly.

"…Conis?" Su started numbly, obviously still trying to process what she'd just seen. "Do you still think it was a bad idea to ask them for help?"

"Let me get back to you on that, Su, once I've convinced myself that I'm not dreaming," Conis replied in much the same tone.

In a flurry of tropical flowers, Sanji spun up to her and grasped her hands eagerly as he took a knee. "The only one dreaming here is I, sweet Conis, for it is only in the realm of dreams that I might encounter an angel as awe-inspiringly beautiful as yourself!" he eulogized.

Conis stared down at Sanji in wide-eyed awe for a minute before slowly turning her gaze back to Su. "Things like this aren't helping."

"Welcome to life with the Straw Hat Pirates," Donny chuckled ruefully. "Bid your last farewells to your problems and your sanity, because they'll never come back."

"…It's still worth it… right?" Su muttered the last part more to herself than anyone.

Leo's eye twitched viciously as he stared at something only he could see. "Let me get back to you on that after I get into a really big fight."

I chuckled before clapping my hands. "Alright, all of that aside, we do still have crewmates waiting for us. Sanji, take the wheel. Everyone else, be on your guard; we're not out of the woods yet."

Conis and Su settled out of the way, the latter's sense of humor clearly numbed in the face of seeing one of the 'almighty' Eneru's priests lose so thoroughly and easily, and Sanji complied, accelerating the Crow up the passageway and out of Satori's forest. As we left, I couldn't help but frown a little at the belt that I was wearing.

"Looks like I didn't need to ask Usopp if I could borrow this after all," I muttered, tracing my armored fingers along the grappling-hook launching mechanism, complete with custom-installed rope-release latch.

"What's that, Cross?" Luffy asked curiously.

I shrugged as I sat down and leaned back, enjoying the ride, as much as I could, given how deep we were in enemy territory… and how high off the ground we were, for that matter. "Eh, just meant to be a precaution I got from Usopp when I heard we'd be going into a huge-ass jungle. It's always a sign of a plan going off without a hitch when you come out of it with backups leftover!"

"I should probably call you out on saying something like that, Cross," Sanji mused before blowing out a cloud of smoke. "But honestly, I'm inclined to agree. I don't think that that could have gone any better."

"Eh," I waved my hand side-to-side. "It would have been better if we'd managed to loot him for any Dials he had on him. But, meh," I shrugged indifferently. "Chances are he'll still be there for a while, and we're making great… time…"

I trailed off as I caught sight of the field of skulls on pikes that we were entering into, the story's events flashing through my mind.

"Soundbite," I started slowly. "Can you hear any… gunfire or open warfare in the distance or…?"

Soundbite shrugged, inasmuch as he could. "NADA."

"Damn it…"

Damn everything. Not a single one of my plans until now had worked how I wanted it to, and the one time everything actually did go as well I could have planned it, it went too well. We were supposed to have a perfectly smooth journey from the Lost Forest to the Sacrificial Altar, with only a brief run-in with Wiper (and, depending on how things turned out, a roller coaster ride on the Milky Road) to interrupt that. We were supposed to arrive at the altar to find our crew waiting for us, and spend the rest of the day resting and preparing for the war tomorrow. We were not supposed to meet any more adversity from Eneru's lackeys until the self-proclaimed god's survival game began. And all of that was supposed to happen because we were supposed to struggle with the Ordeal of Balls.

But we didn't. We beat Satori way ahead of schedule.

Which meant that we arrived in the skull-filled field before Wiper had organized his troops and moved out.

Which meant that Eneru's other priests weren't occupied right now.

Which meant that waiting for us in the field was our collective death sentence in the form of a bald, muscular man with horned glasses and a sword of iron cloud, riding a giant pale-yellow dog.

"So, Satori lost," Eneru's most powerful disciple intoned as he turned towards us. "I can't say that I'm all that surprised."

"T-t-that's Ohm," Su squeaked, trembling both at the priest and his steed. "He-he's supposed to be the strongest of all of the Priests. And the cruelest. W-w-which means that we're in the middle of—!"

All at once, the jaw of every skull in the prairie dropped open, exposing the Dials hidden within.

"The Ordeal of Iron…"

I racked my brain hard for any way that I could get the hell out of this situation without exposing how much I knew to Eneru, thinking hard about Ohm's weaknesses. Unfortunately, the only one I could think of was his arrogance, and it was about as justified as you could get considering how much trouble Zoro went through to overpower him. Damn it, I needed something that I could exploit—

"WHOA, THAT'S A HUGE DOG! HEY, DOGGY! SHAKE!" Luffy said eagerly, holding out a hand.

Like the fact that that dog had been tamed too well so that he followed every order he was given, no matter who said it! There was just one problem.

The dog wasn't moving, and it took every bit of control I had not to let my shock show.

"Foolish Blue Sea Dweller," Ohm drawled, tapping a hand on the dog's head, which somehow got it moving forward. "Holy only obeys physical commands."

'Translation: Eneru got wise from observing Soundbite's powers, and told Ohm to put in earplugs,' I realized.

"Any bright ideas for this one, Cross?" Sanji growled.

"Well, the dog is no problem; Luffy could beat that oversized mutt with one hand tied behind his back," I replied, still frantically searching my mind for any potential weaknesses for Ohm. "But the priest is another story; any moron could tell at a glance that this guy isn't going to fall for the same tricks that Pillsbury did."

"Correct," Ohm stated, now looking directly down on us as Holy loomed. "I have perfected my Mantra, and memorized every inch of the field where I stage my Ordeal." He adjusted his glasses, the light glinting menacingly off of them. "The survival rate is zero percent. From the day God Eneru took his rightful place as ruler of his domain, nobody has faced the Ordeal of Iron and lived to tell about it."

"Hmm. Nobody, you say?" Donny asked calmly, positioning his bo staff.

"Nobody," the priest confirmed.

"I see. Well, then, I think I know the best thing to do in this case," Donny said with the same tone. He then jabbed his staff directly behind him into the Crow's Dial Engine, causing it to roar to life before leaping to grab the boat's steering wheel. I fell off-balance as the Crow began rocketing down the Milky Road again, Ohm's only reaction being to slowly turn his head and watch as we made a break for it.

"Hey, what are you doing, Donny?!" Luffy demanded indignantly. "I could have kicked his ass!"

"Kick his ass on your own time, Luffy," Donny shot back. "But I'm getting us and our boat out of here! Everyone here except you and Sanji falls firmly in that 'zero percent' bracket, and I don't intend to contribute!"

"While you may have a point there," I ground out, glancing around at the surrounding skulls and keeping an eye out for any tripwires the priest might have set up. "I'd suggest we still move carefully; it looks like he's set his booby-traps up in the skulls. Leo, can you cut steel?"

"Uh…" Leo slowly took hold of his katana. "Maybe?"

"Yeah, well, you better figure it out fast, or else."

"Or else what!?"

Before I could respond, Ohm jumped off of Holy onto a specific patch of ground hidden by the grass and swung his sword through the air, causing a series of clicks to ring out throughout the prairie and a number of skulls to start vibrating, no doubt in the name of some sick and twisted sense of 'fair play'. I snapped my head down, only barely missing losing my head to one of several rods of stupidly rigid, barbed wire-shaped cloud that shot out of the Milky Dials around us, crisscrossing across the field.

"Oh, I'm just thinking that it might be useful, considering that this is the freaking ORDEAL OF IRON!" I snarled. "So, either you figure it out or—!"

SHINK!

"AH!"

"CONIS!"

We all snapped our heads around at Su's scream, and my heart skipped a beat as I saw that we hadn't dodged all of the wires. Conis had a sizable cut on her temple and was bleeding heavily, though thankfully she seemed more dazed than actually injured.

"Owww…" Conis hissed as she gingerly fingered the gash.

"Ooooh," Luffy winced sympathetically as he examined the wound. "That looks like it's gonna scar. Believe me, I know. Hey, look on the bright side! At least it'll be badass!"

"THAT IS NOT A BRIGHT SIDE, JELLY-BRAIN!" Su hissed indignantly.

"Agh, damn it. Does anyone here have any medi… cal… skills…?" I trailed off as the temperature on the boat suddenly began rising, and all eyes fell on our chef, who was staring back at the priest. His fists were clenched, flames licked all over his body, and the look in his eye was more murderous than Nami in a temper.

"That poor, foolish priest. Even worse than putting himself in a contest to pit his rugged handsomeness against my most divine physique, he has unwisely injured a lady in front of Sanji," Isaiah said solemnly.

"Nothing can save him now," Leo and Donny concurred together.

"DIS GON' be GOOD!" Soundbite cheered eagerly.

"You bastard…" Sanji growled, the flames around him slowly mounting in intensity. "How dare you harm this sweet, beautiful angel…" And all at once, the flames raged up into a towering inferno as he roared his fury to the truest of heavens.

" I'LL KILL YOU!"

And with that, he all but literally shot off the boat and ran over the Milky Road straight towards Ohm who, I was gratified to see, was thoroughly unnerved. The priest waited for what seemed like too long before bringing up his sword and widening it into a makeshift shield with which to block. And he was still sent sliding backward from the force of Sanji's kick.

Sanji then proceeded to unleash an absolute flurry of blazing strikes against the priest, moving so fast that he was a blur of red and black that the priest was struggling to parry. And the traps did nothing either, for that matter! Any skulls within Sanji's vicinity were almost instantly obliterated from the shockwave of the conflict, and any wires of Iron Cloud that shot at him from a distance, well… Iron versus a pissed-off Sanji? Absolutely no contest. It was only the sheer thickness of Ohm's Eisen Whip and its constant regeneration that kept the priest from getting reduced to a well-done piece of tenderized meat.

I observed the spectacle with an utterly dropped jaw.

"How… but that fire, how did he… and Ohm's Mantra—?"

"Um, Cross? I think I can answer the second half of that," Donny proposed hesitantly. "You mentioned that if someone doesn't know what their attack is going to do, Mantra can't predict it, right?"

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Well… I don't think Sanji's fully conscious of what he's doing right now."

I blinked as I processed that. Considering the fact that Sanji was using both Diable Jambe and Sky Walk way earlier than I could have reasonably expected—especially since I hadn't given him any tips on unlocking either of those techniques early—it stood to reason that he was less considering a plan of attack and more… attacking. Like Luffy back when Jango hypnotized him, there was no strategizing, just relentless, mindless offense. Honestly, it really made sense. What he was using wasn't so much Diable Jambe as it was the 'Flames of Hell' he'd acquired post-Kamabakka. Credit where it was due, it was… actually kind of honorable that his rage over a woman getting injured equated the intensity of the rage he felt whenever he thought of that particular hell.

"Uh…" Conis raised her finger inquisitively as she stared at the ongoing brawl. "Should… I tell him that this was more of a flesh wound and it looks worse than it is, or…?"

"Eh…" I waved my hand side-to-side. "Let's put a pin in that for now, agreed?"

Conis shivered as Ohm narrowly ducked under a roundhouse kick that left an uneven tan on his bald skull. "Upon further consideration, that might be for the best, yes."

Either way, upon thinking more about the matter, this was exactly the kind of stroke of luck that we needed. Ohm may have been formidable, but like most of the priests up here, without being able to rely on his Haki, we—well, Sanji had a chance of actually beating him. And if not, then at the bare minimum, he'd be able to buy us enough time to get away. Provided we capitalized on it, anyways.

"Alright, let's milk this for all it's worth." I eyed Holy who, for the duration of the conflict, had remained seated where he was, panting like an idiot. "Soundbite, can you not get through to the dog? Or the priest, for that matter?"

"NOPE, THEY'RE BOTH WEARING earplugs," the snail confirmed. "Good thing OHM didn't give him ANY COMMANDS!"

"God bless the naturally non-existent IQs of the Giga-Boxer Hounds, Rocky Breed," Lassoo rolled his eyes with a snort.

"No kidding. Luffy, try to unblock the mutt's ears. if Soundbite can turn him against cue ball over there, we've as good as won; there's no way he'll be able to handle both of them at once."

"Got it. Gum-Gum Rocket!" he called out, flying off of the Crow and hitting Holy straight in the chest.

"Donny, Leo, Isaiah, start clearing away those skulls."

"EH!?" the amphibian martial artists choked in horror.

"And why, pray tell, should one as handsome as I—?" the avian started to ask.

"Because you can fly above and around the tripwires and mark a path," I explained frigidly, before pointing at the dugongs. "While they make use of the fact that this place wasn't built for midgets who are three-foot-nothing and crawl under the instant-kill area while knocking down and disarming any more traps that are in our way! Capiche?"

The aqua-martial artists exchanged uneasy looks. "I'm not the only one starting to hate being a midget, right?" Donny hissed.

"Nope…" his compatriot concurred.

"Oh, come now," Isaiah said, sending a stern gaze at the dugongs. "We made the choice to stand by this crew for what they have done for us, am I correct?"

"Yeah…" the two dugongs said, rather unenthusiastically, before backflipping over the edge of the boat and into the tall grass… which prompted over a half-dozen cables of Iron Cloud to shoot through the air.

"WATCH IT, MORONS!"

"YOU'RE THE REASON WE'RE IN HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE, JACKASS!"

"Clumsy little…" I muttered mutinously as I dusted my cap off.

"GOOD HELP is so hard TO FIND!" Soundbite snickered in a tone of voice that was painfully faux-reassuring.

"It truly is, yes. Now, Conis? Can I count on you to drive us out of here?"

The angel glanced at me in a semi-panicked manner for a moment, looking to be a few seconds away from something akin to a mental breakdown, only to slowly take a deep breath and steady herself, steel flashing in her eyes. "I'll do my best." And with that, she took the wheel and slowly revved up the Dial Engine, sending us cruising down the Milky Road.

Soundbite whistled in surprise. "WELL, that's not something you see EVERY DAY."

"You don't seriously think I'd hang out with someone who didn't have a spine buried beneath all that fluff and feathers, do you?" Su sniffed imperiously. "She might be soft at times, but when push comes to shove, my girl can be awesome."

"Sorta like CROSS," Soundbite reflected. "ONLY SHE'S ACTUALLY GOT A PAIR!"

"Har har, hilarious," I snarked before glancing at the last occupant of the boat. "And Lassoo—"

"Don't worry, don't worry," the dachshund-cannon waved his paw lackadaisically. "I know that any attacks of mine would ping off his Haki, and I know that the explosions would set off the traps. I'm good from earlier, I can wait."

Nodding in acceptance, I took the time to survey the status of our situation. Looking back at Sanji, it looked like his fire had gone out; he was fighting Ohm with about as much strength as I could reasonably expect at this point in the story. Fortunately for us, his hellfire barrage had done its job; Ohm was panting, and it seemed that his grip on his Eisen Whip was nowhere near as strong as it should have been. Luffy, meanwhile, was grappling with Holy; beating the dog up would have been a walk in the park, but for a mercy, Luffy was actually actively going for the earplugs. Unfortunately, that led to Holy actually being able to put up a decent fight, probably due to pre-given orders. He wasn't doing any damage to the rubber man, no, but he was inadvertently buying Ohm extra time, for whatever that was worth.

Finally, as the dugongs and Isaiah cleared our path past the final curve on the Milky Road, Luffy managed to latch onto Holy's head, wrapping his legs around the dog's neck much like a noose while his arms reached out towards his ears. The dog flailed as best he could, but ultimately, Luffy managed to dislodge one of the massive, presumably iron earplugs—

WHOOSH!

Only for all of us to pause as a small group of guerillas on Dial skates shot into the clearing, their eyes set on the priest.

"Shandians!" Conis called out.

"Shandians," Ohm growled.

"Shandians!?" I repeated incredulously. What the hell were they doing—!? Oh, crap, the invasion had already started. Well, there went my knowledge of relatively current events!

"We'll defeat the priests and charge God's Shrine! We will light the fire of Shandora!" the leader called out. At that point, I took in his details, and geeze, my current knowledge really was shot; that was supposed to be Wiper charging. But judging from the brown mohawk and the pink, feathery, Doflamingo-esque vest, this could prove to be a turn for the better; that was Kamakiri, the only leader in the tribe who had both good standing with Wiper and a willingness to negotiate.

Ohm snarled in response, and with Sanji's attention diverted for the moment, he spun his blade downward and plunged it into the ground before putting his fingers to his lips and whistling.

"You fought well, Blue Sea Dweller, the most valiant enemy I've ever faced," he spat as Holy bounded over, dislodging Luffy in the process. "But the Shandian invasion occurring takes a higher priority, so I have no choice but to end this now. Die peacefully along with them."

"Like hell I'm letting you get away, you shitty priest!" Sanji snarled as he swung his leg at Ohm. Unfortunately, his opponent managed to dodge by swinging onto his pet's back in a practiced movement before the dog leaped into the trees. Just as a symphony of clicking sounds filled the air.

Soundbite, ashen as his skin naturally was, paled. "Ooooohhh SHIT! EVERYONE BACK IN THE BOAT! CONIS, FLOOR IT!"

The next second found Leo and Donny both leaping back onto the Crow, not caring how many traps they tripped in the process, while Isaiah dove to resume his perch. One second after that, Luffy got to his feet, one rubber arm stretching out to grab Sanji and the other reaching out to grab onto the accelerating Crow.

The Shandians kept moving for all of one more second before the area where Ohm stabbed erupted in a twisted white reflection of Maleficent's forest of thorns, with every other square foot sprouting sharp, deadly spike-laden vines. And the spikes continued surfacing all around the clearing, spreading out fast from where Ohm had buried his sword. The Shandians barely managed to halt their momentum and speed back in our direction, the iron hot on their tail and ours.

"Notgoodnotgoodnotgoodnotgoodnotgoodnotgood!" Su yelped, quivering beside her mistress.

"LUFFY, STRETCH OUT A LEG OR SOMETHING FOR THE SHANDIANS TO GRAB, OR THEY'LL GET CAUGHT BY THE IRON!" I barked out. Luffy gritted his teeth in concentration as he let one of his legs trail behind him. Hearing my words and seeing just how fast the iron was approaching, Kamakiri grabbed onto the rubbery limb, and the other four soldiers followed his example, at which point their collective speed increased. The end result had the Crow filled past its maximum capacity… and the iron cloud slowly gaining on us.

"I CAN'T GO ANY FASTER!" Conis shrieked desperately.

"ROADBLOCK!" Soundbite screeched, drawing everyone's attention to the fact that the edge of the clearing, just in our range of vision, was blocked by an ornately patterned barrier of spiked iron cloud, which was even now growing taller and curving upwards to cut off any escape route.

"Luffy, can you rocket us out of here?!" Sanji demanded.

"I don't have anywhere to grab onto!" Luffy yelled back, looking fearfully at the fast-approaching clouds.

"Soundbite, can you break it?!" Donny said.

"NO GOOD! We'd be SKEWERED before it was SHATTERED!" the snail cried.

"Ugh, my Impact Dial doesn't have enough force to break it, either. Do any of you have something?!"

The Shandians' grimaces of fear, anger, and resignation were all the answer I needed. Gritting my teeth, I looked back at the blue-clad Dugong.

"Leo, you're our only chance! Cut the fence or we'll be killed!" As if to punctuate the point, the iron cloud had caught up and was blotting out the sun above us.

"I-I can't—"

"Leo!" Donny yelped desperately, grabbing his co-student by his shoulders and forcing him to look him in the eye. "If we die here, then… then you should know that I've left a will onboard the Merry stating that I posthumously vote for Mikeyto be the new squad leader!"

In an instant, Leo's entire demeanor shifted, his body going rigid as he held his swords out, the blades forming a pair of right angles with his body. "Get down," he snarled, and the fact that his tone was Zoro-levels of feral made everyone else comply.

A moment later, a whoosh of wind passed over us all as Leo spun into a blur of green, blue, brown, and metal. After a few seconds of silence, we all slowly started getting up and found that every barbed-wire cloud near the Crow had broken, the profane totems that they'd been spewing from decapitated. And as Leo started to slide his blades back into their sheaths—

"O captain, my captain…" Isaiah breathed as he stared upwards.

We all followed the South Bird's view.

"Two Sword Style," Leo snorted firmly as he clicked his blades back into their sheaths. "Vitruvian Vindication."

And in the last second before the Crow sped out of the Clearing, we saw skulls rain down from the thorn-blotted sky.

"Wow…" Soundbite breathed.

"Yeeeaaah, fair warning?" Donny whistled. "Never underestimate how far student rivalries can go."

I immediately wondered if I should start mentioning Kuina more often to Zoro if it made that much of a difference…nah, I wasn't that suicidal, nor was I that desperate for him to get stronger faster.

"Leo? Unless you're desperate to get stronger, don't use the words 'student rivalry' against Zoro," I muttered.

And just like that, Leo's calm-and-collected attitude cracked like a dropped plate of china. "Ooooh, hell no, not in a million years… or without an army between me and him." Cold sweat started waterfalling down his face. "Maybe not even then."

I nodded, and then noticed that we were still rocketing along the Milky Road.

"Uh, Conis? You can slow down now."

The angel jerked at the sound of her name, and the Crow slowed to a stop as she moved back from the accelerator, even paler than her usual complexion, her eyes wide with terror. Sanji moved to say something, only for her to start glancing around frantically. "Has anyone seen Su?"

There was a brief moment of panic as we all frantically looked around the boat…

"Uh…"

Before Donny slowly held up a twitching bundle of fur by its tail.

"What kind of lunatics have I unleashed?" Su moaned, her eyes open and spinning visibly.

"OH, come on, was that little SHOW TOO MUCH ALREADY? Wimp."

Su promptly snapped her head away in a sniff, her fur somehow flattening out into a more dignified look. "As if. The only thing overwhelming about you all is your smell. How you can stand to go so long without bathing is beyond me! Pee-yew!"

I shot an exasperated look at Conis. "Pride: the ultimate steroid."

"I'm starting to figure that out…" she sighed as she took her fox back.

"Fret not, sweet Conis," Sanji crooned before propping his foot up on the railing of the boat and jabbing his fist in the air. "For I swear, though your knight in shining armor might have failed in his duty in this instance, he shall never do so again! So long as you are within my sights, I shall allow no harm to befall thee!"

Isaiah nodded solemnly as he alighted on Sanji's shoulder. "Truly your machismo and valor are worthy of the Swagger tribe. While you are devoid of our most glamorously eye-catching plumage or our stern, valiant beaks, I am nonetheless honored to call you my brother in the ranks of gentlemanliness, which I assure you is a word."

"Are they always like this?" Su asked in a deadpan.

"THE BIRD IS new, but the COOK? PAR FOR the course."

"Joy." Su twitched her ear in amusement. "At least the show is good."

Conis slowly managed a genuine smile. "Thank you. I think… I actually have hope that your crew can set us free," she murmured.

"I'm inclined to agree."

All eyes snapped to Kamakiri, including those of his squad, where he was giving us an appraising stare.

"…You defeated Satori. You nearly defeated Ohm and Shura. And you saved our lives when you had no obligation to do so," he stated.

I elected to shrug in a careless fashion. "Hey, you looked like you wanted cue ball's head too, and he wanted your heads as badly as ours. That's as much a reason for alliance as any." I then paused as I processed just what he'd been saying. "Wait, nearly defeated Shura?! The heck happened at the Sacrificial Altar!?"

Kamakiri shook his head solemnly. "I'm sorry to say that I don't know. All we know is that a… source of ours—"

'Aisa,' I filled in silently.

"Informed us that Shura weakened significantly about an hour or two ago, shortly after you defeated Satori. That's why Wiper decided that now was the time to invade the Upper Yard." Kamakiri sat up slowly, his hand drifting to the Burn Blade at his side. "That's our explanation for being here. What's yours?"

"Our cheap-as-all-hell navigator refused to pay the entry toll at Heaven's Gate, and we beat all the angel officers that came to fine and arrest us, so a giant lobster carried our crew away here, and we had to fight past tons of booby traps, a talking cream puff, and a bald guy with his giant dog on our way to them," Lassoo said in a bored tone. Then he added in exactly the same tone, "And I'm not sure that's the weirdest thing that's happened to us since I joined this crew a few days ago."

Su and Conis both moaned miserably while Sanji moved to take the wheel, getting the Crow moving again towards the Altar.

"Also," Luffy noted darkly. "Conis and Su are our friends, and that Eneru-bastard's been hurting her for a long time now, so we're going to kick his ass."

You could hear a pin drop with how tense the Shandians got.

"…I don't know what's crazier," Kamakiri finally said. "The fact that you just said that aloud here of all places, or the fact that I actually believe you."

"Personally, I think the crazier part is that Eneru didn't just obliterate all of us for Luffy saying that," Sanji said dryly.

"Eh, I'm guessing he thinks we're not worth the trouble," I waved my hand dismissively. "All we did was defeat one of his almighty priests and bring two of the others close to defeat. Not something that someone as powerful as him has anything to be worked up about."

"…good point," Kamakiri conceded.

"Anyway, if we're all against Eneru, is there any chance that we could form some kind of alliance?" I proposed. "I mean, one of you… the Berserker, I think he called himself?" I had to restrain a smirk at the way Kamakiri twitched. "Attacked us on the White Sea. We tried reasoning with him, and he said he wasn't willing to take any chances, but if we're all against Eneru, could we at least try working together for now?"

Kamakiri hung his head with a sigh of 'Damn it, Wiper' as he ran a hand through his mohawk before nodding slowly. "Yeah, alright, that sounds good. For now, you go to the Sacrificial Altar and see about regrouping with your friends. We'll go back out and try and regroup with ours. And see about maybe talking Wiper down from shooting at you guys on sight…" He grumbled the last part to himself, inciting a few winces and snickers from his squadmates.

I hesitated. A lot. There was an easy way that we could get Wiper on our side, and I could phrase it now in a way that wouldn't make Eneru think any differently about us. But was it worth it at this point? Was canon derailed enough that I couldn't reasonably make things worse at this stage? Would having the Shandians on our side from the start… be worth the risk of either island being destroyed?

In the end, I thought back to what Tashigi said back when we formed MI3: "In for one beri, in for all of them."

"Say… maybe this 'Wiper' guy, who I'm guessing is the Berserker I mentioned, would be more amicable if you relayed to him what we had to go through in order to get up here?"

-o-

One conversation and round of introductions later, in which I couldn't be sure whether or not Kamakiri reacted to me mentioning Cricket's full name (those goggles did wonders for his poker-face), the five Shandians rushed off to rejoin their fellows. Here's hoping that staying with us didn't cost them too much, though considering the fact that two of the three priests they were facing were exhausted, and the last one was… well, Gedatsu, terminator-esque bastard that he was, I had my doubts that they could be in too much trouble.

After they left, Sanji accelerated, and aside from one or two run-ins with wildlife and wild rides (which, naturally, half of the boat's inhabitants thoroughly enjoyed, myself included), the rest of the journey went the way it was supposed to: without conflict or combat crossing our paths. Finally, we reached the edge of the forest.

"Soundbite, heartbeat count in the area?" I asked tentatively, resolutely not facing ahead.

"Mmm… THIRTEEN. Our crew, GAN FALL, and the pony-bird."

I didn't even react to the jab at Pierre; that was half of my worries eased, but the more pressing one still remained. So, steeling myself, I slowly looked out at the inlet to see the sacrificial altar erected in its center and… the equally high pile of bodies next to it!?

"WHAT THE FUCK!?" I bellowed incredulously as I stared up at the pile. Where the hell—!? Wait, were those—those were freaking Sky Sharks!

As if in response, the bodies at the top of the pile started shifting around until a very familiar figure appeared over the edge of the peak.

"Hey Cap'n, boys!" Boss waved at us eagerly, looking slightly banged up on account of the thick but still clearly bloody bandage wrapped around his chest. "You finally made it! Glad to see you're alright!"

Leo and Donny's jaws hit the bottom of the deck as they stared upwards.

"We will never be as truly awesome as he is, will we?" Leo asked weakly.

"Signs point to nope," Donny concurred with a minor whimper.

I gaped in awe as I tried to process what I was seeing. "Boss… what…" I gestured at him weakly. "What the absolute hell!? What the heck brought this on!?"

Boss's cheerful demeanor evaporated like an ice cube in hell, scowling as he folded his tail and sat on the pile. I blinked in confusion as the pile seemed to shiver before letting out a gurgle of realization: the sharks he was sitting on were neither dead nor unconscious; they were fully conscious but too scared out of their bruised skulls to move a fin and risk Boss's ire!

"This," Boss rapped his fist on the shark he was sitting on, causing another ripple of twitches. "Is the end result of me working out my shame and frustration." The dugong burned through a third of his cigar in a huff and blew out an evil-looking cloud of smoke through grit teeth. "I lost, and I don't. Like. Losing."

"WHAT!?"

"ACK!" I yelped as Sanji bodily shoved his way past me in order to glare up at the dugong.

"You'd better not have let any harm come to the lovely ladies of our crew, you shitty-dugong!" the cook bellowed, looking to be a few degrees Celsius away from bursting into flames again.

Boss snorted and waved his flipper dismissively. "Oh, calm your tits, Sanji. Robin could handle ten of me at once, and Vivi and Nami, soft though they are, trained under my boys. Even if they had been here, which they weren't, they'd have been fine." Boss grimaced and shook his head. "No, no, nothing happened to them. If there's anything I'm ashamed about, it's what I let happen to the Merry."

I felt as though a surge of ice had been shot into my veins. "What happened to the Merry, Boss!?"

Boss's cigar twitched in his mouth before he jabbed his thumb over his shoulder with a sigh.

I followed his thumb to the Merry and blinked in surprise. It… wasn't as good as I'd hoped, but much better than what I'd feared. The mast was still scorched and blackened, but overall it looked superficial, as did the scorched and charred scratches adorning her hull. Aside from Boss, the rest of the crew was busily stringing up the spare sailcloth, so that probably got burned, too. Unfortunately, the keel was obscured by sea cloud, so I'd have to ask Merry later tonight, assuming she did manifest the Klabautermann again. And considering the severity of her injuries and the fact that even with extra help Usopp was struggling to patch her up, that occurrence appeared to be a foregone conclusion.

But like I said, it wasn't that bad, so—

"IT'S YOU!"

Terry's shout was matched by Isaiah's smug yet elegant grin. "It's me," he taunted. "Did you miss my magnificent presence that much?"

"ALL I MISSED WAS MY VOICE FULL OF POWEEEER!" Terry shouted, somehow managing to flex his muscles while staying in the air. "YOU, I CAN DO WITHOUT! AFTER ALL, ONLY A BLIND MAN DENIES THE AWESOME POWER OF BEAR GLOOOVE!"

"And yet Swagger remains the uncontested superior of the two."

"BEAR GLOVE!"

"Swagger."

"BEAR GLOVE!"

"You do know the definition of insanity, right?"

"BEAR GLOVE!"

"Shishishi, I love these two!" Luffy snickered.

"Yeah," Lassoo grinned as he watched my eye twitch. "There are always two shows at the price of one."

I, for one, grimaced miserably as I stared at the pile of sharks. "I wonder if I can convince one of those things to eat me…" I wondered ruefully.

"I imagine that many employees of the World Government would pay dearly to find a way to make that happen, Cross."

I jerked my gaze back up at the Merry, where one ultra-wanted archaeologist was grinning down at me. "Robin. Glad to see that most of the affairs on this end went off without a hitch. Mind telling me just what the heck happened?!"

Robin chuckled lightly, almost certainly at my annoyed tone, before pointing at a section of the shoreline. "I would suggest that you dock over there, Mister Jeremiah, and we will join you shortly. We have quite a bit to discuss."

And indeed we did. After Nami had given us an earful about Upper Yard being the missing half of Jaya—if I had to guess, I'd say she was both amazed and annoyed by the fact that the Grand Line could rearrange geography at the drop of a hat like that—we got details on what had happened to the Merry.

As in the manga, the 'captured' group had decided to split up and explore the jungle for a bit, in order to discover some of the mysteries the trees held. In addition to Robin, Zoro, and Nami, Raphey, Mikey, Terry, Carue and Vivi had also gone along for the chance at an adventure, while Usopp and Chopper stayed behind to watch over the Merry, and Boss stayed behind to watch over them. Things had gone on quite peacefully for a bit…

Until Shura happened.

In all fairness to the ship's guard, they'd actually managed to put up a damn decent fight against the bastard. In fact, they hadn't even blown the whistle until a minute or so into the fight because they didn't need to. Between Boss's fantastic martial arts straining Shura's Mantra, the blast radius of Chopper's Cherry Blossom Blasts, and the sheer miracle quality that Usopp's sniping held, they might have actually run him off.

Sadly, the decision had been taken out of their hands once Shura had started attacking the one crewmate present who couldn't defend themselves: the Going Merry herself. Boss had apparently managed to save her mast by using a Sky Shark as a living bucket with which to splash sea clouds on the flames, but a few flaming scratches later he'd willingly blown the whistle himself.

Credit to the Sky Knight, he'd arrived in minutes. And once he'd arrived, the tables turned fast. Between his own skills and Pierre providing Boss the mobility he needed to keep up with Fuza? They had the so-called Sky Rider on the ropes. And they would have knocked him clear out of the ring, too!

Were it not for the fact that Shura decided to remind them both that they were fighting on his turf. Damn String Dials… I made a note during the conversation to comb the landscape around the altar at the nearest opportunity, because ten to one said that all of the priests had specialized Cloud Dials hidden nearby. I'd already let them abuse a home-field advantage once by forgetting to warn the team to check their surroundings before, I wasn't going to let it happen a second time.

Sadly, once Shura had them caught up in his strings, then he had them full-stop. A cauterized thrust clean through Gan Fall's chest that he was stupidly lucky to have lived through, as well as a 2-inch deep penetration through the belly of Boss's shell. It wasn't much, but combined with an almost 600-foot drop, it was still enough to stun him. And on top of that, he'd spent the time before Shura's arrival using the Sky Sharks as punching bags, so they'd wanted a bit of revenge, too. Thankfully, the delay-and-acceleration of events worked in their favor where it hindered us: when the Shandians invaded, Shura elected to leave, survivors or no.

On the lighter side, thanks to his instinctively amped intelligence, Chopper had the wherewithal to not throw himself into the bay to try and save his drowning allies. Of course, his hyper-logical mind instead prompted him to throw in someone else who could swim to fish the three out.

And really, when you were drowning in shark-laden waters with unnatural holes in your body, Usopp was one of the absolute last people you wanted to have attempting to save you.

After that, things had gone as normal: the Giant South Birds proved themselves to be far more hospitable than their Blue Sea counterparts, Boss had displayed his still-strong vigor by unleashing holy hell on the Sky Sharks that had tried to eat him, and then the away team had returned and started to help the guards repair the Merry. The rest was history.

"And did everything go as well as you hoped on your end, Cross?" Vivi asked as they finished, night having fallen and Sanji halfway through preparing a large pot of soup.

"Ugh… yes and no," I groused.

"The first shitty priest that we met, Satori I think, was a complete wimp. All he had going for him was that Mantra ability, and since Cross knew its weaknesses, he and Lassoo did most of the work, and then Luffy finished him off," Sanji said.

"But Ohm was no pushover; Sanji got pushed to his limit, and right as Luffy got us the advantage we needed to turn the tables in our favor, the Shandians invaded and Ohm pulled a last resort out of the ground while he escaped," Lassoo growled darkly. "We almost lost our heads to it, and could've lost a lot more."

"Eesh, sounds rough," Nami winced sympathetically. "How did you survive?"

I made to answer and then stiffened as I felt something sharp press into the small of my back. "Blind luck," I enunciated carefully. I then allowed myself to relax as the sharpness was removed; a wild guess said that Leo thought that Zoro was too close for his comfort, and I wasn't willing to test him on it.

Whether they saw the Dugong's actions or not, everyone shrugged in acceptance. From there, it was a normal night with our crew: the injured trained as though they were invincible, the lazy slacked off as though they could get away with it, and the rest of us (me in particular) did whatever we wanted to pass the time between chores. I, for one, chose to kick back with a good fantasy book and make some progress into the reading. Honestly, one would think that a fantasy book in a world as fantastic as the Blue Seas would be somewhat… creatively stagnant, merely rehashing reality, but no, they actually had some damn decent authors.

Gan Fall woke up much earlier than I had expected, probably due to Chopper's advanced medical capabilities, and the reindeer had filled him in on the situation while we waited for Sanji to finish the soup. Following that, as we enjoyed another fine spectacle of Sanji's cooking, Nami finished her drawing and informed us of exactly what the land we were on was, and the knowledge of the City of Gold waiting for us elsewhere on the island. Spirits were high, but just as we were finishing our meals…

"The SHANDIANS are here."

Everyone was immediately on their guard at Soundbite's announcement, turning their eyes towards where he indicated. No movement or sound came for a few seconds.

"We're open for negotiations; we won't attack if you won't," Vivi called. A few seconds more, and rustling came from the treeline as three distinct figures came out and into the light. Wiper's hold on his bazooka was firm, as was his frown, but he wasn't glaring at us with as much venom this time. Kamakiri seemed to be the most at ease, though one hand was staying close to his Burn Blade. And alongside them was the black-haired female commander of the Shandians, Laki, arguably the most reasonable among all of them, though the fact that she was holding her rifle close to her chest showed that she wasn't unprepared either. I couldn't say I was surprised at those three; the strongest warrior and the two most reasonable commanders among the Shandians was pretty much what I expected. What I didn't expect, however, was to see a girl in a light brown dress with brown hair visible beneath her cloth cap and a Burn Blade in one hand piggybacking on Laki's shoulders.

"I take it you recruit young?" I commented weakly, in spite of the warning glare Vivi sent at me the moment I opened my mouth. "Sorry if that's an inappropriate question, it's just that she seems a bit… out of place with you, is all."

Wiper glared at me for a second before jerking his chin at Conis with a grunt, causing her to flinch back fearfully. "The same could be said of the Skypiean fraternizing with a group of Blue Sea Dwellers that are here to dethrone her god."

I hastily stuck my hand out against Sanji as he bit into his cigarette and made to kick the Shandian's head in. He would have forced his way past me to do it, too, if not for some… divine intervention.

"Eneru is not her people's god, Wiper."

All attention snapped over to the wounded Sky Knight, who was sitting up on his makeshift bed and panting heavily as he held a hand to his wound. Despite his obvious infirmity, he still managed to pin Wiper with an impressively stern glare.

"No more than he is mine. Or yours, for that matter," the old man stated firmly.

Wiper bristled visibly as he noticed the fallen god, while Kamakiri and Laki elected to step back warily. "Gan Fall—" the Berserker started to snarl.

"Save your insults, Wiper," Gan Fall spat out with more venom than I thought was physically possible for someone like him. "I was willing to humor your reckless attitude back in the day because you were a hotheaded youth and we still had time, but that is not the case at this point!"

The old man emphasized his point by ramming his fist into the tree trunk he was leaned—the bark just splintered! Re-note to self: age equals badass around here, few exceptions.

Leaning on Pierre for support, the bird having shifted to his pegasus form for more stability, Gan Fall slowly got to his feet and paced over to Wiper, glaring at him. "She is here for the same reason these Blue Sea Dwellers are here, the same reason you are here and, as of now, the same reason that I am here: to overthrow Eneru's tyranny. Now, I am prepared to do whatever I must to help them succeed, including putting aside past enmity. But if you are not, I am quite capable of showing you that a lack of a desire to fight does not indicate a lack of ability."

The two glared at each other for several seconds until Aisa tentatively spoke up.

"He's… he's telling the truth, Wiper."

As Wiper shot a glare at the girl, I took the opportunity to cut in. "You have Mantra?" I asked.

Aisa snapped her head towards me with a panicked expression. "W-what!? H-how did you—!?"

"We have it in the Blue Seas too, just by a different name," I hastily reassured her. "Some people are able to manifest it in unusual ways, like hyper-empathy for emotions and such. At a guess, Wiper brought you here to act as a lie detector or something?"

Aisa started to scowl and nod in agreement before flinching and cowering as Wiper renewed his glare at her. "No, we brought her along because Laki and Kamakiri couldn't say no to her whining, and even if we had left her behind, she'd have just snuck here anyways," he growled out irritably. "At least this way, she's good for something."

Judging by the way Aisa jerked around from Laki and gnashed her teeth at the warrior, that was a bit too far. "Without me, you wouldn't have known that Satori had fallen, you big jerk!" she howled, emphasizing the point with a stuck-out tongue and a pulled eyelid.

"I think I like her," Su piped up.

"DITTO," Soundbite grinned.

"God—real God, if that's an actual thing—help me, this is starting to become a thing," I ground out as I pinched the bridge of my nose.

"She's small, bratty, and she's riding around on someone's back," Zoro noted idly.

"I know, right?" Nami breathed in awe. "It's almost uncanny!"

"Three Aisas?" Kamakiri asked in dawning horror. "You know, I'm starting to reconsider the negotiating idea."

"I AM NOT AN ANIMAL COMPANION!" Aisa snarled.

"One of us, one of us," Su and Soundbite chanted eagerly.

"Someone please kill me…" I moaned. "Or preferably them?"

"I'm agreeing with you a bit too much for comfort, Cross…" Conis concurred as she gnawed on her thumb.

"Alright, enough!" Laki said sharply, drawing everyone's attention. She turned to Wiper and Gan Fall first. "We've had our disagreements with him in the past, but the fact that we're actually here is enough to prove that we're willing to compromise if it means reaching our goal. If that's still true, Wiper, then show it."

The berserker ground his teeth as he looked at Laki. Then, after a few seconds, he slowly turned to look at me. "Kamakiri said… that you came here with the help of a man named Montblanc Cricket. Is that true?"

"Yes. He was willing to help us because we believed in the possibility of something that sounded impossible," I explained.

"He sympathized on that note because of his past," Robin contributed, her tone purposefully careless, as though she hadn't already guessed the implications of what she was saying. "More precisely, because of his ancestor, a man who lived 400 years ago, whose outrageous stories of his adventures ultimately resulted in his execution when he showed his king to the site of a supposed city of gold, but found nothing there. The tale of Montblanc Noland the Liar has become a popular story in his home sea, and a point of indelible shame for his family."

That did it. Wiper's bazooka fell from his grip and clattered to the ground, and his jaw dropped open in horror, a reaction his companions mirrored. Damn, but I was glad that I had let Robin in on all of this.

"Noland… the Liar?" he repeated weakly. "Executed?"

I shook my head sadly as I spread my hands. "In cold blood. And to the very end, he never stopped repeating it. Over and over, he said that he'd seen a city of gold and that if it had gone missing, it must have sunken into the sea. A logical conclusion, considering the Grand Line, but…"

"But that's not what happened, is it?" Terry asked, his voice once more uncharacteristically calm as he and Isaiah swooped in from wherever they'd been listening, looking down on the Shandians from a branch. "We lived in the forest below before these guys used us to navigate to the Knock-Up Stream. And for as long as we, our parents, their parents, and theirparents can remember, our job has been to protect the forest."

"The story goes that many years ago, a group of travelers were permitted to visit the island and its hidden city, Shandora," Isaiah continued. "A time after they departed, a catastrophe befell the island, when half of it shot into the sky due to the Knock-Up Stream. We have never found the island's inhabitants nor the city of Shandora since, and yet we guarded the forest with all the power we had to defend it from other intruders."

"And now we find out that the part of the island with Shandora on it is still intact… which makes you and your people the ones who live there," Terry finished.

"Our ancestors lived there," Kamakiri corrected bitterly. "We've never seen Shandora. Nobody has since the island came to the sky."

"Alright, hang on," I cut in, approaching the small group. "Let me just make sure of something here: you four are here to form an alliance with us, right?"

"You made the offer. If it still stands, then I'm all for it," Kamakiri replied neutrally.

"As am I," Laki concurred. All eyes turned to Wiper, who brushed the tears from his eyes as he looked around, his eyes lingering longest on Gan Fall. Finally, he turned to me.

"My ancestor, the great warrior Calgara, was the mightiest warrior of the Shandian tribe 400 years ago… and the outsider Montblanc Noland was his best friend."

He extended his hand to us. "If you're serious about your goal, then I accept your offer of alliance; for the sake of Calgara's final wish, and for the sake of clearing Noland's name, I will do whatever I must to bring down Eneru, and light the fire of Shandora once more."

I looked at his hand and then gestured to Luffy, who came over. "I'm not the captain here. He is."

Wiper turned towards Luffy and raised a brow, but nonetheless extended his hand to the rubber man. "My name is Wiper, the strongest warrior among the Shandians."

"Monkey D. Luffy, captain of the Straw Hat Pirates," Luffy replied with equal seriousness; I guess he was still thinking back to when we met on the White Sea. But they shook, and that was that. Then Wiper turned to Gan Fall, and the latter held out a hand. Wiper regarded it coldly but ultimately grasped it as well.

"Until Eneru is defeated. Then we'll see," Wiper growled.

"That will have to do," Gan Fall replied sternly.

"Alright, then," I said, clapping my hands and turning back to the others. "Robin, pen and paper, and lots of it. Everything we say will need to be written down to make sure he doesn't hear us."

"HEY! What about MY—"

"If your Gastro-Scramble can futz with Haki, Soundbite, then I think it would be better if we avoided doing it around an ally with the ability," I said dryly. The snail pouted, but nodded, and I turned back to the Shandians. "So, first things first: I'm pretty that our chef will insist on you having some of the soup he's made; he doesn't turn away anyone hungry, and I can guarantee that you'll love his food."

"We'll be fine, I'm sure," Wiper muttered. Not one second later, the sound of someone's stomach grumbling came from behind him, and he slowly turned to glare at Aisa again.

She reacted with a somewhat watery glare. "What!? Come on, I'm nine! I don't have a cast-iron stomach like you!" There was another stomach grumble. Wiper's glare at Aisa redoubled, but she shook her head. "That wasn't me!"

"Ah…" Kamakiri said as he raised his hand somewhat sheepishly, pointedly casting a sidelong look at the pot. "Soup… does sound good after a few hours of warfare, Wiper."

Aisa turned a very smug smirk on Wiper, who threw up his hands in exasperation. "Fine! Go on, then! I'll focus on the main reason we're here. So, Luffy, was it—?"

"YOU'VE HAD YOURS ALREADY, LUFFY!"

WHAM!

Wiper observed with a studiously neutral expression as the rubber man in question was sent rocketing out of the clearing with a single kick.

"… Gan Fall, perhaps you can tell me—"

"And STAY in bed!"

The berserker's eye twitched as he observed the spectacle of a half-pint talking mass of venison gain almost ten times his own muscle mass in an instant before forcibly ordering the former god of Skypiea into his bed, and said former god complying with a nervous expression.

"…What about you?" he said, turning to me with a borderline pleading tone.

"Oh, don't worry, Robin and I will focus on planning things out long enough to get a good plan in mind, and if anyone with a good tactical mind and decent handwriting wants to get in on it, they can feel free…" Wiper sighed in relief until I grinned cheekily. "Buuut no guarantees after that. I hope you enjoyed your last day of being a heartless warrior."

"Welcome to life with the Straw Hat Pirates. Bid your last farewells to your problems and your sanity, because they'll never come back," Soundbite quoted.

"What have you gotten us into, Kamakiri?" Wiper muttered, turning back to his comrade-in-arms… only to see said comrade missing.

"Wow… this is the most delicious soup I've ever had!"

"Yummy!"

Wiper's face fell as he observed two of the other three Shandians enjoying Sanji's soup, seemingly without a care in the world. His jaw clenched viciously, and he turned to the last Shandian warrior. "So, you're one of the last people I can turn to in this world for sanity?" he made to ask Laki…

"Oh, I absolutely love the cut on your dress! Very functional, yet fashionable! What's it made of?"

"Sea King leather, believe it or not. Every once in a while, one that gets shot up in the Knock-Up Stream actually manages to reach the White Sea, and if we catch it before it falls back down, then we get a lot of useful hide and meat."

"Wow, that sounds incredible! Back on Angel Beach, we're all pretty much relegated to these uniforms we spin from Cloud Sheep wool. We've worked it out so that it's not all that itchy, but there's just no style to it…"

"Say, have either of you ever felt silk before? It's absolutely amazing, I have a few dresses I can show you back on the Merry!"

"Oh, that sounds amazing!"

"Thank you, I'd like that!"

Wiper's whole body seemed to jerk as he watched Vivi, Laki and Conis walk to the Merry, chatting like long-time girlfriends.

"...to hell with it," he ultimately growled, apparently deciding that the fight for his sanity just wasn't worth it before stalking over to where Zoro and Nami were splitting a bottle of the latter's grog. "You got any more of that?"

Zoro snorted in derision and took another swig. "Right, because you actually have half a chance at keeping up with us."

Wiper stiffened for a moment before lashing his hand out, snatching the bottle from Nami and draining it in a few swift gulps. Once he was done, he let out a hearty sigh before leering viciously at the first and second mates. "You call that alcohol? I've drunk Sea King piss that was stronger than this water."

"Drinking that stuff isn't macho, Wiper, it's just really stupid!"

"SHUT UP, AISA!" Wiper roared. As he was turning back to the two, however, a thick and heavy glass bottle was thunked onto the tree stump they were sitting around.

"Even in the realms of real alcohol, Sea King Piss is just that: piss," Boss snorted before grinning savagely. "If you want real hair on your chests, then I'd suggest you drink some Sea King Blood. Bit of a misnomer, though, considering how it tends to melt livers."

Wiper's answering grin mirrored Zoro and Nami's. "You're on, water-rat."

Boss's response was to whip out four shot glasses and fill them with the contents, and it looked outright evil. As in, a fly flew over them and died evil. "Put up or shut up, landlubbers," the Dugong replied savagely.

I turned away as the four of them reached for their glasses. Whatever war crimes against livers everywhere they were about to commit, I wanted no part in it.

"What happened to making a plan, Cross?" Robin asked somewhat curiously, papers and pens in hand and ready to be distributed, while an extra set of hands held her soup.

"It appears that the impossible task of attempting to plan for every eventuality shall have to fall to us, my most valiant comrade," I said in the most Russian voice I could muster as I accepted my own paper and pad. "Now c'mon, let's hammer out a war strategy nice and fast. The sun's starting to go down, and we'll have to stop once it gets dark."

Robin nodded in agreement. "Yes, that's a good point. We'll need to keep our fire small in order to avoid drawing attention once night falls."

I smiled like I'd never smiled before when several members of the crew froze around us.

"Did I hear that right, Cross?" Usopp asked.

"Did she just say what I think she just said?" Boss intoned.

"I knew she must have led a sheltered life, but this is ridiculous," Zoro said.

"Alas, poor Robin," Sanji moaned.

"Sad, just sad," Luffy shook his head in disappointment.

"Now, now, my friends!" I waved my hands consolingly. "I assure you, this is entirely a case of nurture and nature gone wrong! This is a sad event indeed, but it is not her fault, of that I assure you."

Robin blinked in confusion before producing the packet of notes I'd made and sifting through it, her eyes scanning the pages, clearly wondering what she could have missed.

Apparently, Nami didn't get it either. "Wait, what the heck are you guys talking about?"

"FOOL!" Soundbite bellowed with enough ham to feed Luffy for a day. "IT IS ONLY the natural conclusion!"

"WHEN YOU CAMP, YOU CAMPFIRE, NO MATTER WHAT!" Luffy proclaimed valiantly as he fell to his knees and punched the ground.

"NO MATTER WHAT, YOU ALWAYS KEEP THE FIRE GOING, EVEN ON THE VERGE OF DEATH!" Usopp proclaimed, more conviction in his voice than I'd ever heard before. "THAT'S JUST A COLD HARD FACT OF LIFE!"

Robin slowly closed the packet before writing something out and showing it to me: 'You knew about this, and didn't tell me because?'

I grinned and took the pen before scrawling out, 'What, and ruin the surprise? I need your help with the life-and-death stuff. You need ours with the cutting loose stuff, because justified as your attitude might be, you have a few more rods up your ass than is typically healthy.'

I couldn't be sure, but I think that her eye twitched as she read the reply. "Miss Navigator, how much of an exercise in futility would it be to attempt to talk them out of this?"

"Not enough to keep me from trying!" Nami spat as she slammed her freshly drained glass on the stump. "Do you morons not realize that we're in the middle of enemy territory here?! We need to keep a low profile or—"

"Hey, Captain, does this look like enough wood?" Raphey asked as she leaned against the stupidly huge pillar of wood she'd assembled with Leo's help.

"Nicely done, my most faithful students!" Boss proclaimed proudly.

"DO YOU MORONS JUST LISTEN TO EVERY OTHER WORD I SAY!?" the navigator shrieked.

"Of course we listen to you, hence how we know that you're spouting nonsense," I scoffed.

"He's right, you know," Lassoo snickered. "Eneru's probably listening to us right now and hearing us make a pact with the Shandians, the Sky Knight, and one Skypiean to take him down tomorrow. Low profile? That ship has sailed, fired upon the land, and then burned the land's flag."

Nami opened her mouth, and then hung her head. "Well, I can't argue with that… well, what about the local wildlife?!" she rallied quickly.

"ARE YOU really asking that?" Soundbite sniffed in offense, turning pointedly in the direction of several pairs of eyes looking out at us from the forest. "COME OUT already!"

Everyone present aside from myself stiffened as a pack of wolves complied with Soundbite's instructions, and the leader, a scar over one of his eyes, spoke up.

"'Ey, jerk-wads, youse all're bein' way too lou—huh?"

I stared at the confused canine for a moment before shaking my head firmly. "Right, a Fonz-voiced wolf is apparently my final limit." I raised my hand. "CHECK, PLEASE!"

"Dream on," Soundbite drawled.

-o-

And from there, the party kicked into high gear. After a bit of persuasion that went much more easily with Soundbite's powers, the tower of logs that Raphey and Leo had gathered was lit into a massive bonfire, around which the wolves, the Kiddie Trio, Carue, and the TDWS were dancing. Wiper, Nami, Zoro, and Boss continued their drinking contest and Lassoo and Kamakiri had decided to fight over who had the right to pig out on the soup's leftovers while, much to Sanji's pleasure, Vivi, Laki, and Conis had set up an impromptu catwalk.

…I had the distinct feeling that that wouldn't happen again anytime soon. And that meant a lot, coming from me. Hence, I took the opportunity to snap as many pictures as I could with our Vision Dial.

Through it all, Robin watched from the edges of the light, only just a part of it, but a part of it nonetheless. And that… well, that meant everything to me.

Nonetheless, I could only enjoy it so much before business beckoned to me, and I cast a glance through the darkness to where I knew the Merry floated. Tonight was the night, and there was no way in hell that I was going to miss the chance to talk to her. The problem, though, was that she was smart, and while she probably didn't know that I knew, if I just came aboard her without any reason, then she'd know that I knew and wouldn't show up! Freaking hell, this was confusing.

Bottom line: I needed a natural excuse to sleep on the Merry, pronto.

…And suddenly, the answer presented itself to me in the form of Aisa chasing Su around the campfire, the two of them laughing their asses off. A plan began to coalesce in my mind, and it would serve the dual purpose of getting me to my goal and providing Nami, Chopper, and Vivi the payback I owed them for that throat chop back when we met Masira. Robin could wait, I still owed her for Whiskey Peak, and the bit with Masira gave me a lot more leeway, but those three? No mercy. I glanced at Soundbite, and if the way he grinned at me was any indication, my eyes must have betrayed the mischievous feelings I had.

"Be as quiet as you can be. Tell Su, Lassoo, the TDWS, Aisa, and the boss of the wolves to make their way into the woods, quietly," I said, slowly backing away into the treeline. This was going to be worth it in every possible way…

… But damn if I wasn't going to pay dearly for it.

And that was exactly the point.

-o-

An hour or two later, the party was starting to wind down, energy draining out of the partygoers as their bodies reminded them that, like it or not, they were still mortal and they did need their rest.

The bonfire was just burning down to a pile of charred and glowing embers when Zoro stretched his muscles with a jaw-cracking yawn. "Alright, I'd say that now the night is pretty much over. Kill the fire and let's get some sleep."

Before anyone could move, I cut in with a massive gasp, going so far as to cover my mouth with the back of my hand. "Sir! You forget yourself!" I stuck my palm out to him while clenching my fist and shaking my head sadly. "And in spite of the astute knowledge you displayed earlier today… For shame, Zoro, for shame."

"SHAME! SHAME!" Soundbite parroted.

Zoro stared at me in confusion. "What the hell are you—?" I cut off his response by sticking a finger in his face.

"After all the dedication you put into celebrating the night in a most appropriate manner, I had thought of you as a brother in arms, Zoro!" I lamented dramatically. "And yet, here at its zenith, the very end, you neglect the most important part of all! The coup de grâce, the final crescendo! Oh, the shame! Oh, the humanity!"

"The humanity! The humanity!"

"What the heck are you talking about, Cross!?" Nami demanded.

I stiffened and slowly turned to shine an extra-wide grin at her. "Why… I'm talking about the scary campfire stories, of course."

And just like that, all activity in the clearing ceased, a feat aided by the ghostly wind that Soundbite was blowing. The male members of the crew slowly moved to circle around the campfire, looking at me expectantly, while the female members and Shandians, too tired to argue, followed their example. I grinned and tilted the brim of my hat down to cover my eyes, hiding the fact that I was glancing around and confirming that my compatriots were in their positions.

"Gentlemen, ladies," I breathed slyly, Soundbite helping my voice to eerily waft through the air. "Tonight, I share with you but one version of a tale oft told. A tale of romance and rejection, of life and death… of man, and the sea. Tonight, I tell you the tale of the goddess Calypso and her lover…" I glanced up at my audience, a feral grin glinting in the firelight. "Davy Jones…"

My audience shivered heavily, either from the ethereal quality Soundbite had layered over my voice, the sudden gale he whistled, or some combination of the two.

I stood up and spread my hands to begin the tale. "Long, long ago, when the seas were still wild and untamed and the world was young, all waters of the world were ruled by the great goddess of the of the seas…"

"Calypso…" Soundbite sighed heavily, and Sanji got something of a dreamy look in his eyes.

"As beautiful and as vicious as her domain, sailors the world over adored and feared her in equal measure. And yet!" I stuck my finger up suddenly, causing a few spectators to jump. "She had eyes… for but one. A young sailor, handsome, brave and bold in equal measure, who won her heart and her his. This sailor… was Davy Jones.

The audience seemed to focus on me a little more. Vivi had outright hearts in her eyes; probably needed to lay off the romance novels.

"And yet, despite this deep love, the Goddess could accept naught but the best as her suitor. As such, she assigned Davy Jones a most worthy task, through which he would prove the veracity of his emotions. She assigned him to collect the souls of the dead, those who perished within Calypso's waters, and to ferry them across the great divide to the other side with his mightiest of vessels, the Flying Dutchman." I began to pace back and forth in front of the log I'd been sitting on, the audience following my every move. "There was, however, a catch. In order to prove his dedication to his task, Davy Jones would have to suffer the ultimate curse of the sailor, in its most extreme form: he would only be able to set foot upon the land and see his love once every. Ten. Years. If his dedication were true and honest, then would he be deemed worthy of the goddess, and be released from his task."

Some watchers nodded unconsciously.

"Ten years did Davy Jones sail, and ten years did he toil, until the fateful day he was allowed to return to land. And yet, when he came ashore… Calypso was nowhere to be found. For while the ocean's bounty might be deep and rewarding… so too is it fickle and wild."

Several faces darkened in sadness or anger. Vivi especially looked ready to strangle a bitch.

"Enraged by this betrayal, Davy Jones' heart turned as black as pitch, and his mind as stormy as a hurricane. He plotted and schemed, and in the throes of his grief, he committed the ultimate betrayal: he ensorcelled Calypso with black magicks, and bound her in the body of a mortal, forever cutting her off from his domain. Then, abandoning her on land, he returned to the seas, not as a venerable ferryman… but as a blight."

"That's so horrible." The whisper circled around, but nobody could tell who said it.

"No longer did Davy Jones ferry those who fell at sea. Rather, he stole them away to his dark and damned locker, where he left them to rot for all eternity. No more did he act with honor or justice. Rather, he struck with malice and vitriol, sinking ship after damned ship with a vengeance.

"So deep was his grief, that the man did not realize his mistakes until he was too far gone to care: for as he enacted his evil upon the world, his evil tainted all around him as well."

Grimaces decorated several faces, and the more skittish members of the crew started to look nervous.

I continued the tale, my pacing turning into a slow circuit of the camp, looking each listener dead in the eye as I rammed each detail home. "His beloved Flying Dutchman, his pride and joy, soaked in the seas like a sponge. Water rotted every plank, and every fresh wave that hit the ship drew out a chorus of agonized groans. The sails became torn and tattered, only just managing to grasp at the winds that blew through them. And creatures of the sea, from barnacles to coral and all that lies between, climbed up the hull to infest every inch of the once-proud vessel. The vessel… and her crew."

The audience collectively shuddered, several of them grasping their arms.

"Indeed, Davy Jones' crew did not escape his curse either. They became warped. Twisted. Their souls were sullied as much as their captain's and their bodies twisted to reflect it. They became abominations, horrific combinations of fish and human that would disgust even the fishmen themselves. The sea wove itself in and around the men, the pests of the sea burrowing deep, deep into their flesh, as they were made one with their damned ship… and their thrice damned captain."

My voice began to rise in volume and speed. No longer was I smiling; now my face was twisting into a feral snarl as I continued circling around.

"Yes… Davy Jones was the most distorted and vile of them all. His body twisted and warped itself into a monstrous form, worthy of his evil. His beard, once luxurious and awe-inspiring, became clumped and massed together by salt and rime, until it came alive, into the grasping arms of a cephalopod." I emphasized the point by placing my hand under my chin and wiggling my fingers. "And his left arm, once so mighty and powerful, became rough and jagged, barnacles and coral growing all along it, until it coalesced into a singular limb." I held my arm up and pinched my hand into a hard claw. "A crab's claw, massive in scale, and capable of snapping a man's neck with a single snip."

Even Wiper shuddered at that.

"But not even there did his evils end. For even as a monster, his heart yearned and ached for his beloved Calypso, an agony that he could not bring himself to bear." I raised my hand up and clenched my fingers over my chest. "So, he cut his own chest open… and ripped out his own still-beating heart."

The throbbing heartbeat that Soundbite layered through the air served to turn quite a few faces green. Even Robin looked ill at ease.

As I continued, I was now crouching down, hunched over the fire like a certain ring-obsessed imp. "He then locked his heart away, at the very ends of the earth, and returned to the sea anew. Now truly a heartless monster, Davy Jones's evils knew absolutely no bounds. He sailed the seven seas with rancor and malice, attacking all who fell within his sights. He brought misery and heartache to all who saw his ship, and death to all who saw his vile face…

"And every once in a blue moon, he would mark a sailor who had wronged him…" I glanced around, confirming the affirmative looks I was getting from my accomplices before turning my palm out to the audience. "With the Black Spot.

"The Spot was a vile curse indeed. A boil, writhing and squirming with the demons of hell, branded into the palm of his chosen victim. Naught could be done to remove it, save for Davy Jones himself deciding that the debt had been in some way repaid…"

All around the campfire, one by one, certain members of the audience jerked and started in shock. Nami, Chopper, Sanji, and Vivi all looked as though they'd had simultaneous heart attacks. Slowly, ever so slowly, they drew their hands up before their eyes and stared, the blood draining from their faces.

It took all I had to keep from cackling then and there. No clue how they'd managed to stick masses of tarred worms on the four's hands (or equivalent limbs), but damn if the TDWS hadn't just shown their stealth chops.

"The Spot marks his chosen for death, allowing Davy Jones to find his victims no matter where they might be, so that he might exact his payment."

"Wh-what does he do?" Aisa breathed in a faux-meek voice, causing more than a few people to jump, especially the 'marked', who were listening very attentively.

I chuckled darkly as I started to pace around the campfire again, putting myself as close to the shadows as I could. "What does he do, she asks… Davy Jones' sole currency is the exact same duty he abandons every day: the lives of humanity. And there are but three ways to repay a debt upon one's soul. The first is to offer up the soul of another, so that they might pay your debt in your place. The second is with hard labor, to join his crew of the damned for however many years you must work off your debt. Yet none truly ever leave the Dutchman, for to become part of the crew is to become part of the ship. To become part of the ship… is to become part of the crew…"

Nami whimpered miserably as she started to hyperventilate. "A-a-and the third?" she squeaked meekly.

I slowly turned my dead gaze upon her, my face devoid of all emotion. "There is but one final way to pay the debt… by paying the debt we must all pay one day or another. By accepting one's fate in the depths of Davy Jones' Locker."

Chopper let out a wheeze, akin to a broken and worn squeaky toy.

I chuckled darkly as I shook my head, turning around and pacing towards the darkness. "They always try and run, you know? They always try and hide on land or avoid the sea… but it's a futile endeavor. Because come hell or high water, be it on land or sea, through sleet, rain or snow… just as the sun rises and the sun sets, as the wind blows and the sea writhes, there will forever be a permanent fact of this world that none can contest…"

I spun around on my heel and smiled, the shadows no doubt playing merry hell with my face.

"Davy Jones always gets his man."

Dead silence fell as I made that pronouncement, apart from a couple of barely audible whimpers from the 'marked,' until a hiss drew everyone's attention to the fire. A puff of steam rose up, another drop of water glistening in mid-air. Then the hissing began to intensify, drops of water intensifying into a stream. It continued for a full ten seconds until…

SPLOOSH!

The fire went out in an instant as a tub-load of water dropped onto the glowing embers, plunging the campsite into darkness. The instant that that happened, utter pandemonium erupted, a flurry of shouting and movement erupting in the pitch darkness as everyone tried to make sense of things… until another light appeared. I knew that it came from salvaged Lamp Dials dyed with plant matter, slowly lighting up the clearing with an eerie green glow, but to everyone else? It was as though they were underwater.

Before anyone could say anything further or react, their attention was drawn to the shadows of the clearing, where a sound was ringing out.

Scraaaaape… THUNK! Scraaaaape… THUNK! Scraaaaape… THUNK!

Before everyone's horrified eyes, a figure strode out of the shadows of the jungle and into the unholy light that had appeared. The noise was coming from the figure's leg: crustacean in nature, it scraped along the vearth-covered ground alongside a heavy galosh stomping each step. The figure's clothing was tattered and ratty; an admiral's coat and a tricorn, surely once grand in appearance, but now looking as though they were centuries past their prime. But its face… scaly, yellowish, tentacles sprouting from his chin and reaching over his shoulders and down his chest, writhing and squirming as though with minds of their own. Overall, it resembled nothing less than the living incarnation of evil itself.

The figure stood silent on the edge of the clearing as he scanned the gathered people, its gaze flicking over each one before slowly focusing on four individuals in particular, causing hearts to freeze.

"I have but one question for ye all…" the figure groaned, his voice deep and bubbling, as though it came from the lips of the drowned.

The figure then raised up his left hand, nay, his claw, and pointed it at the audience.

"DO YE FEAR DEATH, LANDLUBBERS?!"

And he snapped the jaw of the claw shut with a resounding SNAP!

That was the absolute limit.

"EEEEAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGH!" Nami and Vivi shrieked at the top of their lungs while they held on to one another, their hair turning white from sheer terror. Chopper was silent alongside Usopp, Carue, and Pierre on account of how they'd all keeled over with their eyes rolled up in their heads and foam bubbling out of their mouths, and as for Sanji? Well… he was still trying to unlock his muscles from the tree branch he'd clamped onto… thirty feet off the ground, with Boss right next to him.

The Shandians and Gan Fall were scrambling madly to try and find their weapons and skates, cold sweat cascading down each of their faces as the search proved completely fruitless. Conis was passed out with all the grace of an angel, Robin was caught between trembling with terror and repressed laughter, Zoro's hands fumbled uselessly with his swords, struggling to pull them from their sheaths, and Luffy was staring in equal parts awestruck amazement and paralyzed terror.

And me? Well, what else could I do in this situation, faced with the priceless and amazing sight that I saw? In the face of pain and destruction that was completely inevitable but so damn awesome for the fact that I had managed to make it this far, there was really only one possible reaction.

"Pff…"

It was as though a switch was flipped. From motion to nothing, the whole clearing froze as everyone processed what they'd heard. They tried to make sense of it, tried to reconcile what they'd heard with reality...

"Pffff..." I hunched forwards and shuddered slightly as I tried, I tried to hold it in.

Vivi's jaw slowly dropped open. "Oh, holy shit."

"What the hell…" Nami managed to get out.

"Pffffffff…!" I started to shake and shudder violently, the sheer force of what I was feeling shaking me to my core.

"Why did I ever think it was a good idea to team up with these lunatics?" Kamakiri groaned.

"Cross, you SON OF A—" Zoro started.

"PFFHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" I finally busted out roaring, falling over on my ass and letting the weight of my costume crash down on me, the lobster and octopus I was sporting scrambling away as I flat-out cackled, laughing and laughing and laughing at the abso-freaking-lutely hilarious reactions I'd gotten. "OH MY GOOOOD, YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN YOUR FA-A-ACES! PFFHAHAHAHAAAAA!"

I wasn't the only one laughing my head off, either. Soundbite, Su, Aisa, Lassoo, and the TDWS were expected, as were the cloud wolves—those who had helped me and not—and Luffy. But it seemed that my performance had broken the most stoic members of our assemblage: Zoro was laughing too hard to finish his insult, Wiper and Gan Fall were both pounding the ground laughing, and Robin, I was elated to see, had fallen against a rather large root, laughing herself to tears.

It was simply unfortunate that I couldn't enjoy the moment more, for as my laughter died down I became aware of the fact that a number of people were standing around me, glaring bloody murder at my prone form.

My laughter slowly trailed off as I stared up at them all until I allowed myself a hopeful grin.

"I… don't suppose any of you guys can take a joke?"

Their response came in the form of a symphony of metallic clicking as they brought their weapons up to bear.

"…I take it that's a no?"

What came next made the stunt I'd just pulled equal parts totally worth it and not worth it at all.

But either way… damn if it wasn't funny!

-o-

A couple of hours later found me nursing my wounds in my hammock belowdecks on the Merry. Despite the rather severe pain I was in, I still managed to doze off, as did Soundbite. I might have even missed Merry's arrival, were it not for an ill-disguised show of good fortune in every definition of the word.

"Puru puru puru puru!"

My eyes snapped open at the sound, and I glanced around frantically as it repeated, spying Soundbite near the transceiver with a glazed look in his eyes; despite receiving a call, it seemed that he wasn't conscious.

With a groan, I forced myself out of bed, barely managing to feel gratitude through my drowsiness. But as I picked up the speaker, I comprehended the fact that I was receiving a call from MI3 at this hour, and wondered what was so urgent.

"Tiny Tim's Galoshes, for sizes extra-small and down!" I said, tiredly yet cheerfully.

"Where does he come up with this stuff?" Hina's voice wondered.

"Probably the same place where he learns all of his Marine and World Government secrets," Tashigi's voice answered.

"If you two are done…" Smoker cut in. "Cross, we're calling about something important."

"Considering the hour and the fact that all three of you are calling, I very much hope so for the sake of our continued partnership," I deadpanned. "What do you need?"

"We're planning on going after our first recruit for another leader in MI3; we want to persuade someone around our rank before we try going for anyone higher up," Hina stated.

"I've set up a meeting with Captain 'Ship Cutter' T-Bone," Smoker continued. "We're planning to meet with him first thing in the morning; I did my research on him, and I don't think I have any better bet for a decent Marine of that rank. But I wanted to run it by you first; if you know him, is there any reason he wouldn't be a good choice?"

I frowned, closing my eyes as I recalled the zombie-like captain from the Puffing Tom. He was a bit creepy, but a master swordsman and definitely a decent Marine.

"No. He's the Captain I was thinking of; he treats his men almost like sons and he dedicates his life to helping the innocent, and with how much he claims to hate crookedness, I think he's your best bet. Might wanna be careful, though; from what I've heard, he thinks that the World Government's brand of justice is the right one, so if you're not careful…"

"We will be, Cross. Believe me, I've taken that facet of him into account."

"Sir, we'll still have to convince him that this is the best thing to do—"

"Trust me, Tashigi, that's the least of our worries. For now, Cross, after we recruit T-Bone, we're planning on trying to find someone higher up in the Marines to join us. You mentioned Vice Admirals, which ones?"

"Um…" I racked my brains, calling the details to mind. "Momonga might eventually be willing to join, but it would take a lot more work. He's a jackboot through and through. Straight-lace, but… I don't know where on the moral line he stands. Garp… it's hit or miss with him. I know for a fact that he's willing to go outside the rules, but he has faith in the Marines, and it would take something serious to shake that… something personal. And even then… But on the other hand, when you get the chance, you should definitely look into his students, especially Coby. Helmeppo's shaky, but his dad was corrupt and almost killed him in the process of escaping, so his firsthand experience with just how bad men wearing the uniform can be could be a tipping point. But anyway, short-term… I think that the best chance you have right now is with Tsuru. I know that she's close with Sengoku, but—"

"No, Hina agrees. Tsuru seems stern, but she has a good heart underneath it all, and wisdom befitting her age."

"And I'll keep that in mind about Momonga. I'll see what I can do to sway him… and what sort of 'personal' thing are you talking about for Garp?"

"Oh, you'll find that out later," I said cheerfully.

"Tsk… huh. Shouldn't Soundbite be snarking at us right now?" Tashigi asked curiously.

"Sleep-answering," I shrugged. "I didn't know it was possible, but it apparently is."

"Interesting… well, are those the only possibilities you can think of, Cross?"

The image of a certain red-haired, anime-exclusive Marine came to mind. "There… might be one other, but odds are that my crew will end up crossing paths with him before you're done with recruiting those two. If we do, I'll screen him myself; if not, I'll run his name by you, see what you can come up with."

A long-suffering sigh came from the other end. "Fair enough, Cross. Just do us a favor and make sure that if you broadcast tomorrow, you make it a meaningful one."

"Speaking of which, what happened up there today?" Tashigi asked curiously. "I thought you were planning on continuing your broadcast later."

"For the sake of whatever sanity you have, I'm going to suggest you wait for the next SBS; the highlights are fighting a talking cream puff of a priest with clouds filled with snakes, explosives, and other tricks and traps; fighting another priest riding a giant dog with a shape-shifting sword and weaponized barbed wire; having a party with a group of wolves—"

"OK, OK, point taken, I'll wait for the SBS," Tashigi cut in.

"Aw, you didn't let me get to the—"

"Goodbye, Cross. We'll contact you again after T-Bone joins us."

"When you do, Smoker, I'm going to want to know why you're so confident about being able to," I sighed as I started to lean back into my hammock and started to drift back to sleep.

"Ah, wait a second! Cross, Hina has a suggestion that she'd like you to weigh in on."

"Hm?" I cracked my eye open blearily.

"An officer who served with Hina under Vice-Admiral Tsuru way back when. It's been years, but Vergo's a Vice-Admiral himself now, and—"

"Hell no!" I snapped hastily, suddenly very wide-awake as my adrenaline shot through the roof. "If you get in contact with Vergo, you can consider this partnership to be fucking done!"

Soundbite's dozy expression snapped to one of abject shock. "What the—?" Tashigi started incredulously before Hina interrupted her.

"Cross, I know Vergo, he's a good man! He cares for his men, he thrives in spite of the fact that he's in command of G-5, he'd give us a foothold in the New World."

"That traitorous son of a bitch is a deep-cover plant for Donquixote Doflamingo, and one of his closest confidants to boot," I summarized frigidly.

And just like that, Hina's expression froze. "W-what?" she breathed.

I grit my teeth as I pinched the bridge of my nose, dredging up the best way to handle this. "When Vergo first joined, it wasn't for justice or fame or fortune or anything. It was for the sole, singular purpose of providing Doflamingo with an into the Marines. Every second he spent climbing the ranks, every connection he made and bond he forged, it was all to help further Doflamingo's information network within the ranks. The man is a cold-blooded monster, and if you confront him with this, he will not hesitate before killing you."

"No… no, that's not possible!" Hina shook her head in denial. "Hina knows—I know him! Vergo is kind, he's warm, he—!"

"Eleven years ago, Vergo came face to face with the mole that the Marines had in Doflamingo's organization," I cut her off. "That mole gave Vergo a capsule of information meant for Sengoku's eyes only, whose contents would have prevented the massacre that occurred in the Kingdom of Dressrosa a year later, a massacre that Doflamingo orchestrated. Vergo destroyed that information, and then beat the mole and the ill child with him within an inch of their lives." I was silent for a moment before sighing despondently. "I'm sorry, Hina. But when you say Vergo's name… you don't even have the first clue what you're talking about."

"…You'll forgive me if I don't take accusations like that against such a high-ranking Marine at face value, Cross,"Smoker dryly replied after a moment.

"Commodore…" Tashigi hesitated slightly.

I shrugged in response. "Hey, do whatever the hell you want, take my words with a grain of salt or the whole shaker if you have to…" I glared as I jabbed my finger at the snail. "But I was entirely serious earlier: if you contact Vergo, then I'm writing this whole venture off. He scares me more than you ever could, and that is a hard-wrought fact. And you know as well as I do that nothing I've told you so far has been wrong."

"…Good night, Cross," Smoker finally bit out.

"Yeah, yeah, same to you, jackass…" I grumbled as I defaulted to popping a specific finger at the person on the other end of the snail before ramming the mic back into its cradle and cutting the connection.

As my adrenaline ebbed and I stopped being distracted, I became acutely aware of the extensive collection of bruises I'd acquired a few hours prior. I mean, they were healing really fast and I'd probably be fine tomorrow morning, but… well. Being on the receiving end of half a dozen infuriated superhumans was not a pleasant experience. But the end result was being forced out of camp to spend the night on the Merry, which was ultimately exactly what I wanted. Now, if only—

Thud.

I froze as I heard the sound echo above me.

Thud.

There it was again, wood against wood.

Acting fast, I rapped my fist over Soundbite's shell, causing him to jerk awake with an annoyed snort. He glared at me in irritation and started to open his mouth, but before he could roar, I held my finger to my mouth and waited.

Thud.

Thankfully, the next thud served to silence him, causing him to glance upwards before nodding at me. Moving slowly, I scooped him onto my shoulder before sliding out of my hammock and making my way towards the ladder and trapdoor leading out of the men's bedroom, pushing it open to see—

…Alright, I know that I've already gushed about Oda's design and how it measured up to reality, but honestly, I was looking at one of the closest things to an honest-to-goodness ghost I'd ever see outside of Perona's facsimiles; what else am I supposed to do?

The first thing that stood out to me about her was how… indistinct she was. A silhouette more than anything. It was as though she'd stepped out of an out-of-focus sepia-toned picture; her borders were blurred, as though she were melded with the air. Her substance, or what she had of it, was focused more around her hands and her feet. Looking at her center mass and head, I could see through her to the other side. And as for her face, well, there wasn't much to see. What little of her face I could see beneath her hood was featureless and blank, as if she were a mannequin. The only defining part of her I could discern was her mouth, which was closed in concentration as she hammered in bolt after bolt to the metal plate she was affixing to one of the more burnt up sections of the mast.

Finally, after watching her for a minute, I cleared my throat.

Merry jumped almost a foot in the air, which was impressive for her stature, before wheeling around to stare at me in shock. She gaped for a second before sighing and hanging her head. "You knew…" she groaned, her voice little more than a wispy sea breeze. "I knew this was a risk… You got beat up and sent back here on purpose, didn't you?"

I chuckled and scratched the back of my head sheepishly. "That was part of it, yeah," I admitted. "Though it was also revenge for that stunt Nami, Vivi, and Chopper pulled back when we met Masira."

Merry grunted and moved her head in a motion that indicated she was rolling her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I guess I should have seen that coming…"

An uncomfortable silence grew in the air, neither of us sure what to say.

Finally, I coughed and nervously glanced away. "So, ah… do you want an extra pair of hands or…?"

Merry stared at me for a second before shrugging and returning to her hammering. "I wouldn't be much of a pirate ship if I kept you from doing what you wanted, would I?" she grumbled morosely.

Soundbite and I exchanged surprised looks before I ultimately shrugged. I took a moment to spin my finger at the air and jerk my thumb across my throat before climbing out of the trapdoor, thus indicating for Soundbite to put up as good a barrier of noise as he could forge and hopefully prevent Usopp from catching sight of us and fainting from terror.

Once on the deck, I got to work, handing Merry plate after bolt after plate as she slowly patched herself up. It was… grim work, to say the least. Merry was an absolutely incredible ship, and for her to be so beaten, so bruised so... injured… it was just… hard to look at.

We worked in silence for a few dozen panels or so until I finally worked up the courage to speak. "So, ah… how are you… holding up? The whole burnt mast thing notwithstanding, I mean, that's pretty—"

"My keel isn't cracked, Cross," Merry cut me off with slam of her hammer, an exasperated tone in her voice.

I allowed myself to sag in relief, entirely uncaring about her demeanor. "Oh, thank God…"

Merry was silent as she glanced up at me before seeming to sag in defeat. "But… it's coming."

And there was the shot of ice in my veins. "W-what?" I asked numbly.

Merry shook her head as she slowly got back to work, hammering away. "What were you expecting, Cross? I'm an East Blue caravel in Grand Line waters. These seas are just… too rough. The waves, the winds, the Marines… I've felt it coming for a while now. Creaks and cracks everywhere… and day by day, it takes more and more for me to hold my keel together. There's only so much I can take, you know?" She didn't wait for an answer before shaking her head sadly. "There's only so much any of us can do…"

I was no expert on marine engineering, but what she was saying made sense. My mind flashed back to Krieg's galleon at Baratie, and how ravaged she had been. And she was several dozen times the size of the Merry.

And that last line… God, how I thought of that every day.

"Yeah…" I sighed. "I know exactly what you mean."

Another awkward silence descended upon us, Merry hammering and me passing materials to her as I tried to think of something to say.

Finally, I gave her a hopeful glance. "Well… either way, that doesn't mean we can't try, right?" I took the way she shifted silently as a sign to continue. "I-I mean, well, we're Straw Hats, right? Breaking past all the limits, defying every expectation and all that."

"ROW ROW FIGHT DA POWAH!" Soundbite cheered, though his heart didn't seem to be in it.

When Merry didn't respond, I allowed myself a slight chuckle. "Really now, just look at our track record. We've all come out of more near-death scrapes than I care to count, and every time we've managed to pull through. Human or not, flesh and blood or not, you bear our pride more than any of us, so I daresay that luck extends to you too, right?"

For some reason, Merry's hammering became… jerkier and somewhat sporadic, her swings coming at odd intervals.

I frowned at her in concern before turning away to pick up another metal sheet. "So… look, I'm not always a maestro with words, alright? Just… don't worry about it. No matter what happens, you'll always be—"

SKRANG!

I spun around in shock as the screech of tortured metal sang out and boggled at the sight of one of the metal plates wrapped around Merry's hammer like so much tin foil. "The hell—!?"

"Stop it…" Merry hissed out, her entire wispy frame shivering violently.

I tried and failed to make sense of what I was hearing. "Merry, what—? Look, if you're worried about what's coming up next—!"

"I SAID STOP IT!" the ship's spirit shrieked, wrenching her hammer out with a shriek of metal and sending the panel flying into the bay before wheeling on me, her mouth set in a snarl. "STOP BEING SO FUCKING NICE AND JUST DO IT ALREADY!"

"Oh my!" Soundbite barked nervously.

I stumbled back in shock, more than taken aback by this turn of events. "The hell—!? Do what!? What are you talking about?"

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK I'M TALKING ABOUT!?" Merry spat as she spread her arms wide. "STOP PUSSYFOOTING AROUND AND BLAME ME ALREADY!"

…it took me a while to come up with a response for that.

"W-what?" I finally managed to get out.

"BLAME ME!" Merry repeated, slapping her hand to her chest. "YELL AT ME, CURSE AT ME, TELL ME THE TRUTH! STOP SUGARCOATING THINGS AND JUST SAY IT: THIS IS MY FAULT! IT'S MY FAULT FOR BEING SO WEAK THAT I NEED REPAIRS SO BAD, THAT EVERYONE HAS TO WORRY ABOUT ME SO MUCH! IT'S—!" Merry cut herself off with a ragged gasp, and a few drops of something dripped out of her hood. "I-IT'S MY FAULT THAT I'M… I'm so weak… So… so f-f-fragile… so… so u-useless…"

I promptly took a knee and swept up the poor spectre in a hug as she broke down and started to sob. My arms sank into her a bit more than I was comfortable with, but I kept at it and held her nevertheless, letting her sob into my chest and grasp at me desperately while I shushed her and whispered what reassurances I could manage.

"Come on, come on, it's alright…" I breathed, rubbing her back as nicely as I could manage. "None of us blame you, none of us think that this is your fault, of course we don't, why would you ever think that we thought that? Why would we ever do something as stupid as blaming you?"

"Because you shou-u-uld…" Merry wept, tears and more than a bit of snot somehow bubbling out as she buried her face in my shirt. "B-because it's true… I'm weak… I'm so, so weak… I c-can't stand up to the stupid Marine battleships, I can't s-stand up to the s-stupid Sea Kings, I can b-barely stand up to the stupid se-e-e-ea…" She shook her head in denial. "I'm just… I'm not strong enough… I'm small and w-weak and stupid and… and…" Merry hiccupped. "I…I should have just sunk myself at the Sandora and been done with it…"

"What!?" I held Merry out from me by her shoulders and stared at her incredulously. "No! No, no, no, Merry! Are you—are you insane!? Are you deranged or something!? Look at yourself! Look at where you are! Merry, you're in the sky! And more than that, you took the Knock-Up Stream to get here! Only one other ship in living memory has gotten here that way, and it was an East Blue ship, too, Gold Roger's ship before he got the Oro Jackson! How can you possibly call yourself weak when you've come so far, so far into where so few ships have come before?!"

Merry choked and sniffed heavily as she refused to meet my gaze. "B-b-back on J-J-Jaya… when we docked… the-the other ships… th-they saw just how w-w-weak I was and… and they said that I had to-to sink myself… t-they said that… I was gonna, gonna sink anyways, so…" She gasped desperately. "So I should have done the right thing. They said I should have cracked my keel then and there, that it was my duty to si-ink myself so that-that I wouldn't take you all down with me in the middle of the se-e-ea…"

I felt a sudden urge to start burning things rise up in me. An urge that only intensified at what she said next.

"I… I didn't listen to them at first…" she sobbed, shivers ravaging her body. "I-I told them that I was stronger than that, that I was a Straw Hat, and that-that I wasn't going to go down that easy. I-I told them that I'd reach my dream, that I'd see the world with you all…" A wistful smile started to spread across her face before breaking down with another sob. "A-and then… then he started talking… t-the biggest ship around, t-the scary one… h-he said that w-weak rowboats like me didn't have any place in the real waters and that i-if I put my dreams ahead of my crew's lives then… then…" Merry promptly started bawling into her hands. "Then I was a disgrace to ships everywhe-e-eeeere!"

I swear that I felt my blood pressure skyrocket as I processed that statement and I came to a very grim conclusion. "Merry, the ship you're talking about. It was the one that we saw later that night, wasn't it?"

Merry snorted heavily for a second before shaking her head vigorously.

I growled beneath my breath as I vehemently cursed the color pink before trusting myself to speak. "Merry, listen to me: everything that comes out of the mouth of anything and anyone flying that flag is an absolute load. That flag is fucking toxic, and anybody who follows it, and I mean truly follows it and all that it stands for, is irredeemable. You cannot, cannot take their words at face value."

Merry sniffed and stared up at me for a second, before snapping her head away as though she'd been struck. "…but he was right…" she whispered.

"Merry—!"

"He was right, Cross!" Merry repeated desperately, tears streaming out from beneath her hood as she stared up at me. "He-he was right… I-I am weak… and I'm so stupid stupid stupid!" She emphasized the point by rapping her knuckles against her skull. "I… I'm a ship, Cross. I'm not part of the crew, I'm not an equal, I'm not meant to do anything else but get you to your destination! We-we don't hope, we don't pray, we don't d-d-dream…"

Merry tugged on miserably the edges of her hood. "But I… I did dream… I-I got it in my head that I could d-dream of staying with you all f-forever… t-that I could go with you all the whole way, t-that I'd see the Grand Line with you all…" Merry started to shake her head back and forth desperately. "It was a s-stupid, impossible dream, a-and I let it put you all in danger… stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid—!"

And that was when I brought this bullshit train to an end.

"MERRY!" I roared, grabbing the sides of her face and making her look at me. "Merry, listen, listen, listen to me, Merry!You are not weak, and you are not stupid. You are a brave, smart, incredible ship, and absolutely none of us blame you for your injuries, those are all on us, do you understand me? All on us. You are the most incredible ship to sail since the great Oro Jackson, and you are loved. We all love you with all our hearts, Merry, and no matter what, we want your dream to come true! We want to reach Raftel sailing with you, and we will make that happen, do you understand me?"

Merry hiccupped and sniffled as she stared at me before finally shuddering and shaking her head desperately. "I-It's no use, Cross…" she choked out. "I-it's just no use… I've been fighting the sea for so long… so hard… I-I don't want to give up, but… I-I'm just too weak… I'm…" Merry pitched forward and I hastily caught her, holding her to my chest where she just leaned and sobbed. "I'm so tired…"

I found myself without a response to that. All I could do was hug her again, holding her pseudo-corporeal form close to me. I couldn't see Soundbite's face from the angle I was at, but the snail was silent in the face of the development, for which I was half-grateful; killing the moment now would do nothing good… but I had nothing good to say myself.

"It's alright, Merry. Everything will be alright," I found myself whispering, staring out into the woods, barely conscious of what I was doing.

And then I did the stupidest thing I could have done.

"I promise, Merry, I'll save you and keep you sailing with us, no matter what."

Merry fell silent and slowly pulled away from me, staring at me with a sad smile and tears cascading down her face. "Big-mouthed dumbass… we both know that you can't keep that promise. It's impossible."

I let out a bittersweet chuckle, resolving to ride that statement as far as I could. "Merry, I stopped seeing that as relevant the day I was ripped from my home and met Soundbite, and not a damn thing that's happened so far has done anything but reinforce that opinion. I mean, for crying out loud, I'm talking to a Klabautermann! At least half of the world would call that impossible! I'm not about to let that stop me."

"For the world is full of zanies and fools~, who don't believe in sensible rules~, and won't believe what sensible people say~, and because these daft and dewy-eyed dopes keep building up impossible hopes, impossible things are happening ev~ery~ day~!" Soundbite sang out.

Merry swapped her teary gaze between us for a few seconds before finally smiling, sniffling as she wiped her tears away. "Y-you have a point. It's not too late yet." She moved back over to me, and hugged me again. "Thank you, Cross."

I smiled back, holding her close. How the hell I would keep that promise, I don't know, but damn if I was going to spare any effort. For now, I'd tell the crew as soon as we had her loaded up with gold. If we made it to Water 7 before the keel cracked, problem solved. And if not… then we'd just have to ask Franky for help. Between his experience as one of the best shipwrights still alive and his clout in the black market, he was sure to know of something we could try… anything. Anything we could try.

…because in the end, there was just no chance that I was going to just take shit like this sitting down. Not a chance in hell.

"Uh, C-C-Cross?"

All attention snapped to the side of the boat, where the voice of a very ill at ease Usopp was wafting up from. "Are you p-practicing for another ghost story or something?" he posed hesitantly.

I blinked in surprise as I processed this turn of events before shooting a questioning look at Soundbite, who shrugged sheepishly. "GOT CAUGHT up in the moment?"

"Fair enough," I sighed with a roll of my eyes before considering the current situation. I then interposed myself between Merry and where Usopp's voice was coming from. "No, Usopp, nothing like that. I'm… talking with one of our crewmates."

"What the—?" I heard Usopp start to ask before he clambered into sight and looked around in confusion. "What are you talking about? I saw all the dugongs back at camp, nobody else was awake—"

"Usopp…" I interrupted him firmly. "I need you to promise that you're not gonna freak out. Okay?"

The sniper blinked at me in confusion. "Cross, what are you—grgh!" His voice died in his throat when I took a step to the side, revealing the figure behind me. Usopp promptly started trembling like a leaf. "W-w-w-who—!?"

Merry stared at Usopp impassively for a second before slowly allowing a massive grin to spread across her face. "I'm the only person who knows that you had to dive into my bilge for the Clima-Tact's components when you dropped them in there while working on them on the can."

Usopp's first reaction was to flush in embarrassment when Soundbite and I started snickering… before paling in realization. "W-w-wait, d-did you just say your—!?"

I smiled and nodded kindly before walking towards the trapdoor to the guys' room, clapping Usopp on his shoulder as I passed him. "I'll… just let you two get acquainted, then, shall I?"

"Huh?" Usopp jerked his gaze at me. "W-wait a second, Cross!"

"Usopp."

The sniper froze as Merry's gentle tone swept over him. Looking back at her… she had a kind smile on her face.

"We…" Merry started before chuckling lightly and pressing a hand to her head. "We've got a lot to talk about."

And for better or worse… that was where I left them.

-o-

Somewhere in the waters of Paradise, in the stomach of one of the Marines' many sea prism stone-lined battleships, two figures of extreme power and influence were meeting in person for the first time. Both were capable of eliciting feelings of terror from their foes and allies alike for entirely separate reasons, and both were just as capable of inciting feelings of awe from their allies as well. And today, one way or another, these two juggernauts of justice would become inextricably linked.

And it all started… with a handshake.

"Captain T-Bone," Smoker said neutrally, extending a hand.

"Commodore Smoker," wheezed the Captain in question, accepting the handshake. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Your reputation precedes you; I'm quite honored to meet someone else who has such high dedication for our most illustrious Navy. Although…" The somewhat decrepit-looking swordsman glanced around the storeroom they were meeting in. "I will admit to some measure of confusion as to why you insist that we meet here, as opposed to either of our cabins…"

Smoker blew out a heavy cloud as he sat on a nearby crate, giving the captain an evaluating look. "Because I've gone over every inch of both my cabin and this room, and when stacked against one another, this room is much more insulated against eavesdropping than the standard Naval Captain's cabin. All that water-tightening, at a guess."

T-Bone slowly blinked at Smoker. "Eavesdropping? What are you—?" He was interrupted by the door to the storeroom opening, allowing a third figure carrying a Transponder Snail to enter the room.

"Captain T-Bone," Smoker grunted as he gestured at the individual. "Meet my second, Ensign Tashigi." The Ensign in question nodded respectfully at the Captain before placing the fully aware and attentive Transponder Snail she was carrying on a nearby crate and standing at attention by her superior. "And on the other end of that Snail is my long-time friend and confidant, Captain 'Black Cage' Hina."

"Hina is grateful for your agreement to meet with us, Captain."

T-Bone looked rather nonplussed. "The… pleasure is mine, Captain, but I would like to know what all of this is about."

"To begin to answer that, Captain… what is your opinion of the Navy?" Smoker asked neutrally.

T-Bone paused at the apparent non sequitur. "My opinion? I should say that that is obvious, Commodore." He confidently rapped his fist against his breastplate. "Our organization stands as a bastion of justice and righteousness, and one that I am proud to dedicate every fiber of my being to serve. I dare say that you feel the same if your performance against the former Warlord Crocodile is any indication."

Tashigi shifted uncomfortably as she listened to the spiel, glancing at Smoker. "Commodore…"

Smoker stared at T-Bone silently for a second before sighing out a cloud of smoke and grinding out one of his cigars on the crate he was sitting on. "Let me tell you a story, Ensign Tashigi," he started slowly, eyes shut in concentration. "A story whose details I picked up on when I was still a green rookie back in Marineford." He flicked a glance at T-Bone. "Have you ever heard of the 13th Royal Marine Flotilla?"

Every muscle in T-Bone's body seemed to tense up, while Tashigi merely looked confused. "I… can't say that I have, sir. And I've… never heard of any divisions that were designated as 'Royal' either, for that matter."

Smoker shrugged as he dug out a new cigar and set about lighting it. "Not surprising, Ensign. The tradition of labeling divisions and fleets as being specifically 'Royal' is a West Blue practice, where there's more of a monarchical presence than the rest of the world. The 13th were particularly renowned back in the day for their indisputable and uncontestable sense of brotherhood, dedication…" Smoker finally got a spark going, and ignited the end of his cigar. "…and justice."

Tashigi glanced around as the mood hung thick and heavy over the room, feeling uncomfortably behind. "That's… very impressive, sir…" She stiffened as something clicked with her. "You… you said that they were renowned, sir?"

T-Bone slowly reached up and tilted the visor of his helmet down, shading his eyes solemnly. "I am… sorry to inform you of this, miss," he stated evenly. "But you see, the 13th Royal Marine Flotilla was made defunct a little more than twelve years ago."

"O-oh, I see, I'm sorry…" Tashigi scratched her arm uncomfortably as she tried to find something to say. "What… what happened?"

Hina's snail mimicked the shake of her head. "Twelve years ago, all Marine forces of the West Blue were collectively recruited for participation in a singular operation known as the 451 Degree Campaign."

"It was a manhunt of epic proportions," Smoker summarized darkly. "A wave of white and blue that went from the Calm Belt to the Red Line and encompassed every inch of the West Blue in between, every island and patch of sea… all for the sole purpose of locating a single fugitive who had evaded the forces of the World Government for the past eight years."

Tashigi frowned as the numbers she was given started tickling something in her memory. She ran a quick calculation, and paled at the result she came up with. "Nico Robin…" she whispered numbly.

Smoker nodded solemnly. "Bingo. She'd have been sixteen at the time. Obviously, the 451 Degree Campaign failed. We believe that it was that self-same maneuver that drove her out of the West Blue and into the Grand Line. She only managed to avoid the pursuit of the collective might of the world thanks to a crime ring that had been operating in the shadows for the past few decades. Arms trading, black market dealings, assassinations, slavery… it's only the fact that it would require an extortionate amount of force to prove their crimes and connections that let them keep going for so long. The Campaign wiped out every trace of the ring, but Nico Robin slipped through their fingers. It's only the fact that they had taken out such a blight on the West Blue that kept those twelve fleets from being court-martialed by Marineford itself, and even then, only just."

Once anew, the numbers stuck out to Tashigi. "Twelve fleets? But what about—?"

"The… 13th was made defunct prior to the start of the Campaign…" T-Bone wheezed. "Due to… differences of opinion."

"They disagreed with the undertaking as a whole," Hina clarified. "To a man, the soldiers of the 13th disagreed with the basis of the operation. They viewed it as a gross misappropriation of resources, leaving the majority of the West Blue to suffer at the hands of countless other pirates while they pursued a single criminal, and an underaged one at that. They just didn't see how the costs could justify the means. So, they started to organize a protest against the campaign, and they were apparently about to make overtures to the rest of the Royal Flotillas as well for a show of unity…"

"When they were discovered by the chief officer of the Campaign," Smoker ground out darkly. "The highly acclaimed Vice Admiral Sakazuki."

The blood drained from Tashigi's face, while a minor tremor shook T-Bone's gaunt figure. "Oh, no…" she breathed. "He didn't…"

Smoker drew in a lungful of smoke before blowing it into the air, watching it twirl in the lamplight. "To the last man," he confirmed solemnly. "For the crimes of high treason against the World Government, insubordination and mutiny. And when the 451 Degree Campaign started two weeks later, it was led not by Vice Admiral Sakazuki… but by AdmiralAkainu."

"I think I'm going to be sick…" Tashigi gurgled as she put a hand to her forehead and staggered around the room in an effort to calm her stomach.

"Be strong, Ensign," T-Bone intoned, adamant conviction strumming through his words. "To oppose the justice of the World Government is an unforgivable sin. The punishment they received for their actions was swift, just and true."

Tashigi shot a horrified look at the Captain, but before she could say anything, she was interrupted by a dark chuckle filling the room.

"That's ironic, coming from you, Captain," Smoker remarked. Shock registered on T-Bone's face for the barest instant before fading back into his adamant façade, but nobody missed it. "After all, that's not the end of the story. Among the 13th Royal Flotilla, nobody escaped from Sakazuki's assault. Everyone there was subjected to his Absolute Justice, and all of them were burned alive… but there was one who survived long enough to be put on a bed and given the medical treatment necessary to save his life. He was apparently native to the Grand Line; that natural power is supposedly what let him survive."

"Still, with magma burns over ninety percent of his body and breathing only possible via the extensive usage of machinery, he could barely speak, much less move when the newly appointed Admiral heard of him," Hina recollected. "And when Akainu came calling, fully intent on completing his inquisition, the survivor began to speak. He told of how he had seen the light, the error of his ways, and come to understand the glorious mission of the Marines. He looked Akainu in the eye, inasmuch as he could, and he thanked him for what he'd done. For killing his fellow sinners and for sparing him from death so that he might devote his life to the World Government's Divine Justice, protecting civilians from criminals and punishing those criminals for their crimes. In a show of approval that Akainu has never performed since, he not only spared the survivor's life, but promised him a promotion as soon as he was fit to return to duty, and personally put in the efforts needed to ensure that that time came as soon as possible."

"With all the medical treatment that the World Government could provide, that survivor soon gained the ability to breathe independently again, though every breath was an effort." Smoker blew out yet another cloud, his gaze never deviating from T-Bone's stony face. "His face recovered to a degree that could be deemed 'presentable', though it remained gaunt and somewhat skeletal. And from that day on, he never strayed again from the Navy; he was a model commander, a father to his men, a hero to any civilians he helped, and a demon to any criminals who crossed him. But above all, he gained a reputation for never allowing the slightest hint of crookedness to enter any aspect of his life that he could control."

Tashigi's mouth slowly opened again as she turned to stare at T-Bone. His fists were clenched, but his expression remained unreadable.

"Personally, though," Smoker stated as he held out his cigars and examined them. "I wonder about the truth of that aftermath. On the one hand, it's possible that he could have truly converted like that… but on the other, he could have just been so scared he decided to always stay well away from the mere thought of angering the World Government from then on. And yet, he always maintained that sense of duty and integrity that drove him to stand alongside his brothers in the 13th to do what they felt was right. I think that it's possible that the good Marine…" He looked at Captain T-Bone dead on. "May have remained decent to this day."

T-Bone stared impassively at Smoker for a few moments. "…How do you differentiate the two terms?" he asked quietly.

Smoker exhaled. "As someone defined it to me not long ago… a good Marine follows his orders to the letter, and will sacrifice all for the sake of Justice."

"But decent Marines will sacrifice everything for the sake of all those whom they swore to protect," Tashigi continued firmly, conviction in her voice.

"Even Justice, if it comes down to it," Hina finished.

T-Bone's eyes widened marginally for a bare fraction of a moment. For a time, he just… stood there, staring dead ahead at nothing.

Finally, he turned around without a word and started to stride towards the door.

"Captain T-Bone?" Tashigi asked hesitantly.

The Captain halted in the doorway, staring at it for a second before leaning his head back, a smile on his barely-present lips.

"Ah, what a beautiful day…" he sighed euphorically, apparently speaking to himself. "I am so glad I chose to go for a walk. I look forward to seeing Commodore Smoker tomorrow when he arrives. I've heard good things about him. I hope he lives up to my expectations."

The two Marines and the snail sagged in defeat.

"C-captain T-Bone, please—!" Tashigi started to plead desperately.

"I truly hope that nothing untoward happens during the meeting," T-Bone forged on, heedless of the Ensign's protests. "I would hate for the meeting to be… sullied."

And with that, the Captain made to reach for the door—

"Don don don don!"

When he was given pause by the telltale ringing of a snail behind him.

Tashigi glanced at the ringing snail in shock before hastily rallying. "C-Captain T-Bone, I am begging you! Just ten minutes of your time, ten minutes, that's all we ask. Listen to the SBS with us, and then afterwards…" She bit her lip hesitantly before looking away. "Afterwards… you can decide what you will. Just… please, give us a chance?"

T-Bone's smile was gone, and his face betrayed no emotion. After another two rings, his hand fell back to his side, no longer reaching for the door. He made no more movement than that, and said nothing. Smoker took that for what it was, and looked at the snail, before pausing. "… Does anyone know how to answer the damn snail with a call already running?"

"… Hina still wonders how we can hold calls despite the broadcast," the other Marine Captain admitted.

Tashigi thought it over for a minute before snapping her fingers. She then proceeded to kneel before the snail with a hopeful grin. "Would you mind connecting to the SBS, please?"

The snail's expression shifted from Hina's uneasy one to a look of surprise before shrugging and letting out a CLICK! It then started whistling patiently. "—three, four, five, six—"

Tashigi smiled beatifically. "Thank you."

"…I will have to remember to treat Transponder Snails with the utmost respect in the future," T-Bone muttered.

"Nine, and woo, that's a pretty number! Alrighty, I'd say we're good! Oh, wait. Soundbite, have you got the Gastro-Scramble up?"

"Yup yup yup!"

"OK, good. And now, ladies and gentlemen—!"

"So this is the part where you usually start the SBS?" came a feminine voice.

"Exact—SONNUVA BITCH! NOT EVEN BY THE DAMN SNAIL THIS TIME!"

"Leave my mother out of this!" Lassoo barked with a snicker.

"OH THE insect-ity of it all! I'VE BEEN OUTFOXED!"

"Gee, did you hurt yourself thinking of that one?"

"Only however MUCH IT PAINS ME whenever I think of you, PUFFBALL!"

"Oh, hell, no. Two of them?" Tashigi groaned miserably.

"One of these crates has got to have sake in it," Smoker grunted, getting up from his seat and looking around.

"Oh, please, allow me to assist you," T-Bone said fervently, moving away from the door.

"I knew keeping a bottle at my desk was a good idea," Hina muttered.

"Ugh… alright, with another attempt for me to start my own freaking radio show foiled, let's go ahead and get this rolling. First of all, as you can tell, I'm not alone on this broadcast. I might regret this, but why don't you introduce yourself?"

"Oh? Well, alright. Heso, everyone!"

-o-

"…And that's basically the long and short of it," I concluded. "Personally, I still think it's incredible. A long-lost city of gold in the sky, apparently watched over by a cruel and despotic 'god' who can fling down lightning at a whim. Just when you think the world can't get any more ridiculous—"

"It thwows yah anothah cuhveball!" Carue finished with a snicker.

"As the duck said," I nodded in agreement. "But anyways, allow me to catch you up on the game plan we decided on this morning. We've split into four separate groups. The first group, composed of Nami, Usopp, Sanji, Leo, Raphey, Isaiah, Gan Fall, Pierre, and Aisa, are currently handling our escape route. They're navigating the Going Merry out of Upper Yard and to safer waters, so that our ship stays unmolested. The second group, composed of Luffy, Chopper, Zoro, Terry, and our anonymous crewmate, are heading towards where we determined the city of gold to be located, thanks to the map we picked up while we were in Jaya. According to Aisa, she can tell that Eneru is thereabouts, so they'll have the dual task of finding us our payday and proof of Noland's claims, as well as kicking god's ass. Third are our Shandian allies, who are accompanied by Boss, Mikey, and Donny. They're regrouping with the main Shandian invasion force, and then going on a priest hunt. Shura first, to be specific. Boss is keen on getting his rematch. And finally, the last group is composed of us: Soundbite, Lassoo and I, Conis, Su, Vivi, and Carue."

I frowned darkly as we moved through the severely untamed flora of Upper Yard, massive roots, branches, and rocks impeding our progress at every turn. Carue was having the least amount of difficulty, it seemed; I could only guess that he'd had plenty of training for different terrains. "The fact is that Eneru is an egotistical bastard with the mother of all God Complexes. Chances are that when we try and take him down, he won't go down easy. At minimum, he'll want to take his 'followers' with him. Hence, we're making our way to Conis's home, Angel Island, in an effort to try and convince the locals to evacuate, at least until the danger's passed. Hopefully, nothing will come from it, but honestly—"

"Baa-a-a-a~"

We came to an abrupt halt when we heard the unmistakable sound of a goat coming from nearby. "Vivi, how confident are you now with those Lion Cutters?"

By way of response, the princess began spinning one of the weapons in question, while Carue exchanged looks with Soundbite. The snail frowned in concentration.

"Baa-a-a-a~"

It was closer this time.

"Three of them… 7 O'CLOCK!"

The hand-scythe lashed out at Soundbite's cry. The three goat-like Enforcers attempted to dodge, but only one succeeded; one took the hit head-on, falling down in a bleeding mess, while the second got a nasty gash on his side. The third evaded the blade entirely… and was instead shot off into the depths of the forest as he caught a baseball moving as fast as a cannonball in his gut. I then moved to confront the remaining, minorly sliced enforcer… and promptly widened my eyes in shock as I noticed that the one in question was wielding a bazooka; weren't these dumbassess only supposed to be packing Axe Dials?!

Said Enforcer promptly began circling around the group on his skates, bringing his bazooka to bear. Unfortunately for him and luckily for us, while Dial Skates were fast, Supersonic Ducks were much faster; before he knew what was happening, Carue was behind him, and a quick jump and lash of his talons later found the would-be attacker sprawling and landing hard on the ground. He attempted to get up—

CRACK!

And promptly collapsed with a groan as a fallen tree branch cracked over the back of his skull.

The rest of us looked in surprise at the very clearly incensed Conis, who had a ferocious scowl on her face as she looked down at the Enforcer. She huffed several breaths, and after a few seconds, managed to unclench her fists around the branch she'd used as an impromptu club. Then, tossing it aside, she bent down and took the Enforcer's bazooka, slinging it over her back with what I swear was practiced ease.

"It looks like I'm going to be putting those combat lessons from the White Berets to good use after all," the angel sighed grimly. "And here I just thought I'd only ever have to use them in case hostile pirates or guerillas decided to attack the beach…"

"I told you so, didn't I?" Su asked with a visible grin. "Conis was comparable to Captain McKinley himself with how much effort she put into strengthening herself to protect her and her dad; she just opted for a more peaceful lifestyle because of the shit Eneru had her doing."

"…Wow," Vivi finally managed.

"You said it," Lassoo whistled.

I finally managed to get my wits about me with a grin as I remembered that I was still broadcasting. "Well, I guess this just goes to show: first impressions are worth absolutely—!"

Looking back on it… it just happened so fast…

Three warnings, three simple warnings, all at the same time and all within seconds… how could I have reacted? How could anyone have reacted?

It just… it just happened.

A crackle in the air, like static.

An acute stench of ozone.

And that voice… that voice…

"Be quiet, worm."

In the split second I had, the split second where my neurons fired, I just… I just reacted. I grabbed Soundbite and my bag and I flung them… somewhere. Anywhere, really, just so long as they were away from me, and then… and then I jerked. Lunged, more like it, shoulder-checking Conis in an effort to get her as far away from me as was physically possible.

As I fell to the ground from the sheer overbalancing I'd done, I turned around, twisting my torso.

All I saw was a finger, a single index finger, pointing at my chest...

And then my world became white.

Cross-Brain AN: Something else we realized that we've been falling short on, loyal viewers: sadistic cliffhangers, so here's one. And to amplify the sadism, we're going to be on hiatus next week. We hope you enjoy seething at us, and we'll see you two weeks from now!

The Patient One AN: But seriously, everyone, it's not merely sadism that has us doing this. Finals Week is fast approaching for two of the three of us, and needs must we give that the dedication and attention that it necessitates.

Xomniac AN: Which is good, because this chapter has burned. Me. Out! Viva the break! Also, 30K words in one chapter! Hahaha! Kiss my ass, sandman, no sleep tonight!